NGO integrates over 200 returnees

Preserving migrants’ rights and ensuring their protection and well-being, according to the International Organization for Migration, has always been a difficult part of enhancing reintegration.

But crime prevention and advocacy organization, Crime Check Foundation, through its reintegration of migrants and returnees’ programme has integrated over 200 returnees.

According to its Executive Director, Ibrahim Oppong Kwarteng, successive governments’ attitude towards migration has been unclear even after the launch of the National Migration Program in 2016 which sought to focus on social protection access among others.

He said the incessant calls from stranded Ghanaians outside the country necessitated the creation of the reintegration of migrants and returnees’ program

“CCF is often inundated with calls from stranded Ghanaian migrants particularly those stranded in the Gulf countries with serious physical and psychological problems,” he said.

Speaking at a migration stakeholder conference in Accra on demystifying the myth of a better life in Europe, Oppong Kwarteng advocated for more sensitisation outrages.

“If you have to travel by all means, please do it the right way if not then we plead with our youths to stay here and work, there are good opportunities in the country and that is why we need to extend the sensitization outrages to the hinterlands” he added.

Citing the stories of two beneficiaries of the CCF reintegration of migrants and returnees’ program, Jemila Tahiru, a 23-year-old woman who returned from Oman mentally deranged, and  Menuna Malik a 29-year-old Saudi Arabia returnee who suffered acid bath, he said: “Most of these people waste their savings to get here or have to work to pay for the cost of their travel to a trafficking syndicate who is often very brutal in this enterprise”.