The Ashanti Regional Commander of the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the Ghana Police Service, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) Regina Mintah, has advised parents to be wary of unscrupulous recruitment agencies who lure girls ‘into slavery’, under the guise of providing them with lucrative employment abroad.

She expressed worry about the practice, pointing out that these girls and their relatives pay huge sums of money to the fake recruitment agencies who promise to secure them employments abroad, but end up selling them into slavery, prostitution and other inhuman treatment in countries such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Azerbaijan.

ASP Mintah, speaking to the Daily Graphic in Kumasi, as reported by GhanaWeb, noted that the monitoring by her outfit had indicated that most of the girls were recruited by these fake agencies from the Ashanti Region.

She said although there were genuine recruitment agencies which were involved in genuine work, a lot more bogus agencies had joined the fray and had been luring unsuspecting young persons into slavery abroad.

She paid tribute to SEWA Foundation, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) that had been rescuing the girls from these countries, but noted that some of the girls and young women had come back to Ghana with mental challenges, diseases, pregnancies and bodily scars.