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Ghana’s Immigration Service (GIS) on Wednesday warned young people in the country to desist from migrating via irregular routes to Europe to save their lives.
According to GIS, only five percent of all migrants who tried to reach Europe through the Sahara desert and the Mediterranean Sea were able to reach their destination.
Sadly, the remaining 95 percent end up in detention camps and prisons, while others die of thirst, hunger, human abuse and torture in the desert or from accidents on the high seas that drown.
Deputy Immigration Commissioner (DCI) Eric Afari, the GIS Regional Commander of Bono provided advice at the opening session of a three-day training workshop for officials of the GIS Migration Information Center (MIC), held in Abesim. near Sunyani.
Organized by the European Union (EU) in association with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the workshop on safe migration and information and communication technologies would enable officers to exercise their mandate effectively and professionally.
DNI Afari regretted that irregular migration among young people, particularly in the Bono, Bono Este and Ahafo regions, was widespread, and said that only just over 50 percent of all returned migrants from Libya came from the three regions.
He said that the MIC established in Sunyani, the regional capital of Bono in 2016 had a significant impact and tremendous achievements in preventing irregular migration among young people in all three regions, and praised the EU and IOM for the center.
Since then, DNI Afari said the number of returned migrants from Libya dropped from 18,512 in 2011 to 4,031 in 2017 and dropped further to 741 in 2018.
“It is also significant to note that of the 2011 figure, 52 percent of the returnees came from the Bono, Bono Este and Ahafo regions. This figure dropped to 39 percent (1,562) in 2017, and dropped further to 38 percent (284) in 2018 ”.
He attributed the drastic reduction in the number of returnees in part to the impact of the MIC’s ongoing awareness campaigns, which was a benchmark for potential migrants to verify the authenticity of their travel documents.
Funded by the EU, Collins Yeboah, Community Outreach Officer, IOM-Ghana, later told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that his team was implementing the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa action to strengthen the protection and reintegration of migrants in Ghana.
The general objective of the action is to contribute to strengthening migration governance and guaranteeing the sustainable reintegration of migrants returning to the country.
As part of the project, Mr. Yeboah said that IOM had assisted 1,500 Ghanaians to return to their home country, most of them from the Bono, Bono East, Ahafo, Ashanti, Greater Accra and Western regions.
Recently, there was an increase in cases of high returns in the northern region with more than six percent of returns, he added.
— GNA
