GIS identifies illegal migration points

Daily Graphic, Pg 15, Saturday, May 09/09

Story Rebecca Quaicoe-Duho

THE Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) has identified four major towns as some of the notorious converging points for illegal migration in the country.
They are Nkoranza, Dormaa Ahenkro and Techiman, all in the Brong Ahafo Region, and Mankessim in the Central Region.
Those converging points, according to the service, were used in transporting hundreds of Ghanaians to nearby Burkina Faso or The Gambia with the intention of crossing over to Libya through to Malta or Sicily and finally to Europe.
However, an Assistant Director of Immigration, Ms Judith Dzokoto, called on people who had the intention of using such routes to use the case of over 40 Ghanaians who were massacred in The Gambia and others who were executed in Libya recently as examples of the fate of irregular migrants.
She said this at a public sensitisation and information programme on the dangers involved in travelling undocumented and the option for safe migration at the Institute of Islamic Studies at Nima in Accra.
Ms Dzokoto said the GIS had decided to intensify its campaign to educate people to desist from using illegal routes to travel.
The campaign, which is also being used to educate people on human trafficking as a way of helping to curb the menace in the country, is a collaboration among the Migration Management Bureau (MMB) of the GIS, Eanfoworld for Sustainable Development, a non-governmental organisation, and the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).
According to Ms Dzokoto, the service recorded the deportation of Ghanaians to the Kotoka International Airport on a daily basis from mostly Libya, the United Kingdom, Italy and Spain, a situation which she said was worrying.
She said the MMB, together with the IOM, had established migration consultation centres in Sunyani, Tamale and Takoradi where durbars and seminars were organised to educate the indigenes on the need to use legal channels whenever they wanted to travel.
“The craze to travel abroad at all cost has made it possible for people to believe all stories told by connection men and traffickers. All kinds of job offers are being put out there on the Internet and people fall prey to the machinations of these connection men,” she said.
A Deputy Superintendent of Immigration, Ms Belinda Adwoa Sika Anim, said although most European countries had intensified their land and sea border patrols since 1995, it had not decreased the number of irregular migrants but rather led them to use alternative but dangerous routes.
She, therefore, appealed to people not to risk their lives by travelling undocumented through dangerous routes in search of greener pastures.
The Founder of the Institute of Islamic Studies, Sheikh Umar Ibrahim Imam, who chaired the ceremony, called on Muslims, especially parents, to wake up to their responsibilities and educate their children not to seek greener pastures outside the country.
The Executive Director of Eanfoworld, Alhaji Alhassan Abdulai, said his organisation was collaborating with the GIS to help stop people from dehumanising themselves through illegal migration.