By Christiana Afua Nyarko
Accra, July 11, GNA – The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection says it has begun investigations into BBC’s reportage of Ghanaian children wrongly taken in anti-human trafficking raids backed by US Charity International Justice Mission (IJM).
The Deputy Minister, Ms Francisca Oteng Mensah, told the GNA in an interview that, a committee had been set up to investigate the claims by the British media.
“A committee has been set up to look into the matter, and because they are looking into the issue, l may not be able to say much or comment further,” she said.
Ms Oteng Mensah said at the right time and with the completion of the investigations, the findings would be communicated to the stakeholders.
BBC on July 10, 2023, published a report on an anti-human trafficking raid carried out at midnight in Mogyigna, a remote hamlet in the Northern Region of Ghana.
The said raid, as reported by the BBC, was an IJM-Ghana Police collaboration under Ghana’s Human Trafficking Act 694 of 2005.
It said the raid involved four children, including an 11-year-old girl, who the report stated was yanked with the others as she slept with her grandparents in one of the huts in the hamlet.
However, the IJM in a three-page press statement issued on Tuesday, and copied to the GNA, said the BBC’s report of the raid contained “material inaccuracies” insisting that they were fully transparent with the police thus provided them with the facts of the case.
It insisted that the police and the authorities concerned would have to make their own determination if the law had been violated.
“In the ‘Hiltop’ case referred to by the BBC, IJM was fully transparent with police providing them with the facts of the case, including that there was one likely case of child trafficking and three that were not clear,” the statement said.
It said the police conducted their own investigations determining that there was sufficient evidence before proceeding with the operation.
Mrs Linda Asante Adjei, the Vice President of the Ghana Journalists Association, in reaction to the reportage, told the GNA that cross-checking of facts was important before publication.
She advised against the “quick-to-break the news” attitude of some media establishments, which compromised facts checking and caused some media houses to “commit errors”.
GNA