CHIEF Superintendent Alex Yartey Tawiah, the Dansoman Police Commander has called for stiffer punishment for child traffickers saying the current five-year imprisonment term for offenders is meagre.

He suggested a review of the laws on trafficking to make it more biting and proposed a 10-year minimum jail sentence to perpetrators.

"The trauma and trials that children go through at the hands of traffickers is very worrying," he told the Spectator in Accra on Thursday.

The Human Trafficking Act 694, 2005, is meant for the prevention and punishment of human trafficking and the reintegration of trafficked persons.

Trafficking is defined as the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring, trading or receipt of persons within and across national borders by the use of threat, force or other forms of abduction, fraud, deception, the abuse of power or exploitation of vulnerability or receiving payment and benefits to achieve consent.

Trafficking is criminal and the Act prescribes a summary conviction term of not less than five years for both people who provide others for trafficking and the person who uses the trafficked person.

Indepth investigations by the Spectator shows that areas such as Ekumfi Akra, Ekumpoano, Immuna in the Central Region; Asuogyaman and Kudiokope in the Eastern Region; Bortianor, Kokrobite, Old Ningo, Prampram in the Greater Accra and Yeji in the Brong-Ahafo Region and major places where child trafficking is said to be on the ascendancy.

Some children are trafficked at the age of five and they stay in servitude for a decade in some communities.

Research shows that a number of these children are trafficked as domestic servants, cocoa plantation labourers, porters, street hawkers and labourers who work for fishermen, forestry and quarry operators.