Teenage girls recruited for sex in Kumasi?

The Garden city Kumasi, will not only be one of the centres to host Ghana 2008. It will also be a centre for adventure as teenage girls are recruited for the gratification of participants and officials.

Currently, a secret recruiting exercise slated for December 15, has been penciled down for girls who should either be 15 years of age or slightly older.

A source hinted Network Herald that the exercise will be extended to other match venues depending on the success of the December 15 exercise.

Coming in the wake of international expose on child pornography and pedophilia, the Executive Director of Child Right International, Bright Appiah, has called on the security services and Human Rights Organisations to rise up against the practice since targeted "victims" will be children below the age of 18.

He said his outfit has already sent a letter to the Ministry of Women and Children Affairs, copied to the Ministry of Justice and other related agencies to halt the exercise.

Expressing similar fears, the Executive Director of Enslavement Prevention Alliance - West Africa Ms. Tatiana Kotlyarenko has expressed fears about the purchase of the 50,000 boxes of condoms to be distributed by the Ghana Aids Commission towards the CAN 2008.

She argued that the action was enough to encourage promiscuity among children and women as well as their exploitation.

Ms. Kotlyarenko questioned the morality of the country's leadership saying such a move is bound to send all manner of interpretations through the minds of vulnerable children and the general populace.

Delivering a paper on "The impact of Child Trafficking on Human Development" at a media sensitization workshop at Akosombo last Saturday, Kotlyarenko said human trafficking which engender sexual exploitation, has become synonymous with modern day slavery and forced labour.

According to her, an estimated 246 million children are engaged in child labour with the method of acquisition ranging from outright Sale, child abduction, deceit of parents and coercion.

She identified poverty, harmful cultural practices, low educational level, high unemployment rate and large households as recipes for trafficking.

Child trafficking is presently identified as the second highest business practice in Africa.

She said in recent times, the sale of organs has become an intrinsic part of human trafficking with culprits making huge sums of money out of it.

Parts like the heart, lungs and kidney are traded in foreign countries at high prices for transplants.

Ms. Kotlyarenko described this modern day slavery as not only a horrifying human debacle but also a health issue and appealed to the media to join the fight against human trafficking by exposing the act at all levels.