Naa Seidu Braimah, a Member of the Council of State, has expressed concern about the alarming rate of child trafficking in the Upper West Region. Naa Braimah, who expressed the sentiment at the second ordinary meeting of the Jirapa District Assembly on Wednesday at Jirapa, noted that the Region was becoming notorious in child trafficking. Naa Braimah, who is also the Guli Naa in the Wala Traditional Area, challenged District Assemblies in the Region, the security services, civil society organisations, traditional rulers, Assembly members as well as opinion leaders to wake up to the task by implementing measures to arrest the situation. He said when such children were rescued their parents and the traffickers should be traced and given stiffer punishment to serve as deterrent to others. Naa Braimah said the country would rather be retrogressing in its human resource value if such development obstacles were not properly addressed. He said trafficked children usually ended up being illiterates, who sometimes fail to learn any trade that could help them to sustain their livelihoods. Naa Braimah also expressed worry about the level of planning in the country and urged the District Assemblies to develop plans that would be useful and beneficial to the people. “Do not plan to construct pencil mark gutters that would continue to create problems for the people”, he advised. He called on Assembly members to work in unity and explained that District Assemblies are Developmental Agencies of which Assembly members were expected to play a critical role to ensure their success. He also advised them to see chiefs as focal points of development who should be part of issues, regarding the development of the districts. Naa Braimah urged Assembly members to educate their people on the activities of the Constitution Review Commission (CRC) and the upcoming population census exercise for them to be properly informed and to participate. He appealed to the people to advise their parents, brothers and sisters living in Southern Ghana to come home for enumeration during the Population census. Source: GNA