A five day training to build the capacities of consular officials in seven missions abroad has opened with a call on missions to be receptive to migrants and provide them with the needed support.
The participants were selected from missions in Jeddah, Riyadh, Kuwait City, Lome, Freetown, Abidjan and Ouagadougou to improve protection for Ghanaian migrants who live, work, study, transit and experience conflicts or natural disaster.
The training is part of a project being implemented by the International Organization on Migration (IOM) in protecting vulnerable migrants in West and Central Africa focusing on Ghana, Burkina Faso, Senegal and the Gambia.
It is funded by the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration (PRM) of the State Department of Government of the United States. Mr Charles Owiredu, Deputy Minister for foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, said Ghana has been active in the process of developing a global compact on migration and remains resolute to its implementation.
He said the traditional roles of the consular officer’s occasional visits to foreign prisons, to offer consular assistance to detained Ghanaians or undertaking an identification exercise to be deported, has become more complex, requiring training and special skills to deal with the emerging trends.
The Deputy Minister said Ghana has witnessed incidents of many Ghanaian migrants undertaking dangerous and perilous journeys through the deserts in the bid to seek greener pastures adding that the experiences in the Middle East where they ended up working as housemaids, factory hands has not been pleasant.
This, he said, has placed the migrants in situations that require urgent support and protection from the missions abroad and this can only be achieved when the consular officers were given the requisite training.
He announced that in line with government’s foreign policy objective, the Ministry was considering an on-line Migrants in Countries in Crisis (MICIC) training course for all officers in the Ghanaians Missions abroad to serve as useful guide in offering consular services.
Madam Sylvia Lopez-Ekra, the IOM- Chief of Mission, said there are Ghanaian migrants in all parts of the world and they were not excluded from various challenges such as rape, torture and many other abuses faced by migrants.
She said in order to offer such timely and appropriate services, the consular officers must be able to identify and understand the issues of vulnerable migrants including victims of trafficking.
Madam Lopez-Ekra said Ghana has a history of migration and migrants facing serious abuses in several parts of the world and expressed the hope that by the end of the training the participants would be able to support migrants in their respective missions.