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Lydia Forson Rescues 12-Year-Old Boy From Slavery
A Ghanaian actress, Lydia Forson, has facilitated the rescue of a 12-year-old boy who had been forced into child labour at Gasoekope, a village surrounded by water in the Volta Region.
The boy, who gave his name as Emmanuel, said he was taken from his mother at Tema near Accra to the Volta Region where he was forced into child labour, together with several other children brought from other parts of the country.
Emmanuel, at a point, could not take the treatment meted out to him and the other trafficked children and therefore escaped from the village, thinking he could find his way back to Tema.
The young boy however got lost within the cluster of villages in the area and was stuck because the whole vicinity was surrounded by water. He was wandering on the banks of the Volta River when he met Lydia Forson.
The actress was in the Volta Region for an outreach programme to rescue children trafficked to the area.
She was working in collaboration with Right To Be Free, an organisation owned by Eric Peasah.
Lydia Forson explained that the boy was standing at the shore waiting for an available boat to get in when they found him.
‘Our boat was the only available boat. He was afraid to tell us he was running away so he lied that he wanted a lift to the neighbouring village. He didn’t know who we were and we saw he was afraid because he was lost and didn’t want to say it.
‘We took him with us and in the boat we questioned him. When we were far from the village he finally opened up a little. When we got to Kpando, he tried to escape from us, so he started panicking and wouldn’t talk.
‘But we spoke to his master, reported it to the police and social welfare and took him with us. He finally started relaxing by the third day when he saw we were leaving Kpando. All he kept saying was he didn’t want to work on the water and he wanted his mum,’ Lydia explained.
She said the boy is currently at the Osu Children’s Home in Accra undergoing a process to reunite him with his mother.
The beautiful actress relinquished her celebrity lifestyle of makeup and other special treatments to spend three days in the region to scout for the trafficked children.
