Two Office Blocks Commissioned In Volta Region To Enhance Immigration Services

Under the Ghana Integrated Migration Management Approach (GIMMA) project to improve facilities and to enable the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) discharge its mandate effectively, an office block complex each with equipment and logistics have been commissioned and handed over to two entry points of the Service at the Agortime-Afegame Border Post in the Nyive Sector and at the Hodzokpe Border Post in the Akanu Sector at Afegame in the Agortime/Ziope District of the Volta Region. 

The project is being funded by the European Union (EU) with the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) and the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) as the implementers. 

GBC's Volta Regional Correspondent, Korsikuma Hovi reports that, like other West African countries, Ghana has porous borders with its attendant increase in both smuggling and trafficking of local and foreign nationals for forced labor and sexual exploitation. 

In order to respond to these complex migratory challenges, the EU, the IOM and GIS have come together to jointly implement a three-year GIMMA project to address migration and border management and also help  combat transitional crimes such as smuggling, human trafficking, proliferation of small arms and light weapons and all other forms of illegal migration. 

The project involves capacity building for officials to control borders and protect migrants, to educate and inform potential migrants on safe and legal migration and to establish a national database for effective migration related policy making activities. 

The package included fully furnished office accommodation, computers and their accessories, night vision devices, metal detectors, tents, camp beds, rain coats and solar panels. 

Others are standby generators, a vehicle and motor bikes. 

In a speech read for him by the Volta Regional Commander of Immigration, DCI, Isaac Owusu Mensah, the Comptroller- General of Immigration noted that the facilities have come at an opportune time to provide a serene and conducive environment for officers at these entry points.

The Chief of Missions at the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), Sylvia Lopez-Ekra has disclosed that over five thousand Ghanaians migrated through the Mediterranean to Europe especially to Italy and those who suffer and die are mostly from South Saharan countries. 

She stressed the need for the officers to keep a credible data base with the computers.

GBC