Human traffickers prey on children of Ghana's poor

MADINA, Ghana, June 30 (Reuters) Twelve-year-old Emmanuel Nkorbo does not know how much money his mother got for him.

He knows she was promised money if she gave him up, delivering him into the hands of traffickers, who trade people for profit.

''It is a long time since I saw her,'' he said in the local language twi, his bright eyes betraying little emotion.

''It is difficult to tell what I remember, but when I meet her I will know it is her,'' he said.

In the years since then, Emmanuel has worked in Yeji, a Ghanaian town on the shores of Africa's largest reservoir, Lake Volta, home to thousands of fishermen.

Emmanuel was not paid but says he liked fishing, frequently diving deep to disentangle the net when it caught in the lake's many stumps, holding his breath until his lungs could no longer bear it before breaking the water to gulp for air.

However, careless work could lead to a torn net and a beating.

Now at a centre for trafficked children in Madina, he says he is happy to be in a place ''where nothing bad is being done'' to him and where he does not get beaten for misbehaving.

The criminal and commercial trade in human beings, known as trafficking, thrives in the poorest corners of the world, and Ghana, a poor country in West Africa, is no exception.

Nearly 600 trafficked children have been rescued from Ghanaian fishing communities in the past three years under a programme run by the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

It has concentrated on fishing communities but the group says trafficked children can be found working throughout Ghana in markets, farms, as illegal miners or as household staff.

PRICES AND PROMISES Trafficking of human beings became punishable by law in Ghana only last December but some poor and ill-educated parents, unable to provide for their children, still sell them into labour.

Prices and promises vary but in fishing communities parents can be offered about 500,000 cedis (55 dollars) in cash and a pledge of more money later, said Joseph Rispoli, the IOM's head of counter-trafficking.

Parents hand their children over to fishermen, sometimes people they know, who promise work, education, care and shelter either in their homes or someone else's.

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