International responses to human trafficking : The Ghanaian experience

Human trafficking in this era has been conceptualized as a global event that is likened to slavery because of the inhumane treatment that the victims go through. The scope and the criminal aspect of it demands police initiative to curb the menace. The current researcher used semi-structured qualitative interview, direct observation, and review of documents to gather data from Ghana Police Service and some anti-human trafficking institutions in Ghana to identify the nature, scope and responses to reduce or eradicate this menace that has detrimental effect on the people of Ghana, as a case study. Contemporarily, in terms of origin, destination and transit of people to engage in this criminal act, the menace put Ghana into Tier Two Watch-List classification in 2015 on the international level. Human trafficking in Ghana was characterized as violence, debt bondage, exploitation, deprivation of the freedom of the victims, and confiscation of travelling and other documents. The study revealed that the government of Ghana had put in only a minimal effort to curb the menace, and that the trafficking of people had created a security concern that the police must be apt to control. There is a recommendation that the Government of Ghana puts in maximal effort to educate the people and equip the Police service in Ghana to enable the service take tough action to ensure the maximum implementation of the regulations against human trafficking.


INTRODUCTION
Human trafficking is a global problem and it is an issue of human exploitation that creates instability and corrupts the chain of manpower supply in many countries.A study by the US Department of State (2013) estimated that globally the number of people trafficked on annual basis ranges between 600 and 800 million.Human trafficking, regarded as one of transnational organized crimes in recent times by the United Nations, is rated as the second heinous crime in the world (Kempadoo et al., 2015;Shelley and Lee, 2007).It requires the effort of governments, non-governmental agencies, and the world as a whole to come together with a common front in dealing with the menace of human trafficking (Tyldum and Brunovskis, 2005;Laczko and Gramegna, 2003).US Department of State (2013) considers it as a form of modern slavery and attempts to define it as, "the recruitment, harboring, transportation, or provision of a person for labor or services, through the use of force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of subjection to involuntary servitude, peonage, debt bondage, or slavery".
In many countries, especially in the Americas and Europe, the police have intensified their border-policing through focusing on people smuggling.In some countries such as Australia, the police consider people smuggling as a threat to national security (Pickering, 2004).In Netherlands, the operational practice of the police uses human-centered approach to gather unstructured information that reveals many unknown human trafficking practices (Poelmana et al., 2012).In Malaysia, the major human trafficking problem confronting the police concerns trans-border security that prompted the police to strengthen their maritime governance to control the influx of illegals to curtail public corruption fueled by human trafficking (Stanslas, 2010).
Slovenia, for example, shaped its anti-trafficking paradigm to include the tightening of the borders and saving human trafficking victims alongside the use of strict policing based on the frames of criminalization (Pajnik, 2010).On April 1, 2009, the enforcement of the laws against the menace in Europe by the Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human Beings (ECAT) took place in UK with the view of protecting the victim of human trafficking (Simon, 2010).United States raised the awareness of the criminal aspect of trafficking of persons and the need to prepare the police agencies to deal with the menace through the enactment of laws that treat human trafficking offences as crimes (Farrell et al., 2010).A study revealed that in Britain, thousands of the children were sexually exploited as victims to internal human trafficking despite the mandates provided to curb human exploitation to bodies.This prompted the establishment of some centers, including the UK Human Trafficking Center, Child exploitation Online Protection Center, and National Referral Mechanism, to see to issues of curbing human trafficking in the UK (Westcott, 2013).
In shifting the paradigm of New York Police arresting and prosecuting the trafficked to the protection of the trafficked who were the victims, New York State enacted some laws that empowered the anti-human trafficking volunteers to form an Interagency Task Force with the obligation of eliminating the use of force, coercion, or fraud by the human traffickers (Nack, 2010).In Asia, to curtail the problem of human trafficking victims suffering violations and denial of human rights by their traffickers and some government agencies, the international organizations and the states initiated some actions to tackle the inhumane aspects against the victims (Willman, 2009).
In Africa, Nigeria for example enacted some laws to treat cases involving human trafficking to Europe, Middle East, and some other parts of the world including North America with the view of reducing sexual exploitation of Nigerians.Other human exploitations and sale of humans Gyamfi 63 or human parts in Nigeria under the umbrella of human trafficking was treated as heinous crimes but the laws suffered serious enforcement challenges (Elechi et al., 2007).Considering the scope and nature of human trafficking contemporary, the international community of researchers is urged by the ILO to make empirical assessment of the menace and come out with an amicable solution to curb it (Gozdziak and Collette, 2005;Belser, 2005).This study of human trafficking in Ghana was guided by the social constructivist framework that is built on the epistemology that truth is based on objective knowledge and emanates from social influence through exchanges and inquiry (De Simone et al., 2015).The theory posits that objective knowledge is obtained through active engaging minds of people in a society (Bodem, 2010).Constructivism framework is useful for the study because of the nature of the study that is based on the engagement of minds with anti-human trafficking activists who had had direct interactions and exchanges with the victims and the traffickers and the researcher's social interaction with some of the victims in servitude at the Volta Lake in Ghana where thousands of the victims were found working for their so called "Masters" and their traffickers.
The study was also guided by the interpretivist conceptual framework that stipulates that to understand the reality of a phenomenon the researcher must live it (Cresswell, 2007).The interpretivist conceptual framework guided the researcher to understand the reality of human trafficking as understood from the perspective of the lived world of the victims and the traffickers as experienced by the experts who might have gained experience from their interactions with the victims and the traffickers.The researcher used interviews to gather data from some Police Officers and individuals working with some Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) empowered to look into issues of human trafficking in Ghana and Ghanaians in the diaspora.The data gathered from the participants contributed immensely towards unveiling most of the challenges of human trafficking.The interpretation of the phenomenon by the experts involved in the study portrayed the reality of the phenomenon in Ghana and elsewhere.

Brief profile of Ghana
Ghana, a former British colony in West Africa, shares borders with Burkina Faso, Cote D'Ivoire, Togo, and at the South is the Gulf of Guinea.A census conducted in 2010 revealed the population of Ghana was 25 million.Ghana achieved republican status on July 1, 1960.The country gained independence as a sovereign nation on March 6, 1957 and it is the first African country, south of the Sahara, to gain independence from the Western colonial regime.The country's first president after attaining independence in 1957 was overthrown in a military coup in 1966.Ghana, as a nation was destabilized and suffered economic decline from 1966 to 1992 resulting from interventions of periodic military coups.Since 1992, the political regime has been stabilized with democratic leadership of government.Ghana had its own system of policing long before its colonization by the Europeans in the form that include, enforcement of laws, patrolling, and territorial protection (Gyamfi, 2012).Many Ghanaians have the perception that, "Ghana lacks the requisite institutional capacity and framework for responding to organized crimes" (Aning et al., 2013).

Purpose and problem statement
The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify the nature, extent, problems and the responses to globally reduce or eradicate the menace of human trafficking using the Ghanaian situation.Human trafficking is considered as an issue that is multidimensional, global, and associated with human rights, migrant exploitation, cheap labor, and corruption (Stanslas, 2010).The criminal nature of it has been a global issue to the police.In many different parts of the world human trafficking victims are exploited and forced to engage in heinous crimes such as prostitution.The traffickers use them for sexual acts, as slaves, and for other criminal acts that benefit the traffickers and their accomplices mostly (Murray, 2006;Cockbain et al., 2011).

Limitation and delimitation of the study
The study objective was to identify the scope at which human beings are exploited and recommend means for the eradication of the menace of human trafficking.The researcher focused mainly on the criminal nature and the effort to combat the menace.The scope of the study was not on all transnational organized crimes but limited only to crimes resulting from human trafficking.

Research question
Human trafficking gains momentum on daily basis and millions of trafficking victims worldwide are enslaved resulting from human trafficking.Efforts of many nations to enact laws and use police enforcement units to do away with exploitation of people through human trafficking continue to prove futile and classified (US Department of State, 2013).In 2015, the profile of human trafficking in Ghana in terms of origin, destination and transit of people to engage in criminal acts put Ghana into Tier 2 Watch-List classification on the international level.The research question for this study is, "What is the extent, nature, scope, protection, and prevention of human trafficking in Ghana?"

METHODOLOGY
The researcher used qualitative method and the case of Ghana to explore the nature, extent, problems and responses to human trafficking menace across the globe.Eight participants who were working in anti-human trafficking organizations were selected and interviewed using purposive sampling technique because of the nature of the phenomenon under consideration.Case study design and purposive sampling technique were employed because of the intention of the researcher to have in-depth description of the phenomenon from the experts who had been well associated with the work on the fight against human trafficking in Ghana.Other suitable qualitative design appropriate for the study could have been ethnography but ethnographic design was avoided because of cost, time, and other constraints (Mathews, 2010).Direct observation and documents reviewed were used to triangulate the study.

Research setting
Eight participants made up of four top police officers from the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of Ghana Police Service (GPS) and four other Ghanaians working with some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in curbing the menace from Ghana were interviewed.The researcher obtained permission from GPS to interview the Police Officers of anti-human trafficking unit of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID) of GPS.The researcher interviewed the participants from GPS at a location in Ghana Police Headquarters, Accra.The participants from anti-human trafficking NGOs were interviewed at a different location in Ghana.
The study participants were interviewed after explaining the purpose of the study and agreeing with them for the interview.With permission from the participants, the interview was recorded and the interviewees confirmed the transcription of the interview and gave approval for the usage of the data for the study.The participants were assured of their confidentiality.The researcher gave every participant a three digital code, prefixed by "SP" (Study Participant) signifying their identity.The codes represented the first letter of the surnames of the participants.For example, if the surname of a participant is Gerald, the code would be SP 007 (The seventh letter of the alphabets).In a situation where two participants' surnames began with the same alphabetical number such as Gerald and George, George was given the code SP 070 and Gerald's code became SP 071.The third digit distinguished the two participants based on the alphabetical order.With the codes, no real name of any participant appeared in the data collected.
Field notes were taken from the body language and other observations during the interview.The interview was captured using handwritten notes and voice recorders.The interview was supported with facts noted and electronically captured from the field using information-computer technology by the interviewees who, as part of their duties, usually received reports and made follow-ups to the scene where the victims of human trafficking were being exploited.The researcher was given access to the relevant archival documents held at the CID office relating to human trafficking in Ghana.The CID office also provided statistical data spanning 2005 to 2015 on human trafficking in Ghana.The researcher spent about one hour on every interview session.After the one-on-one interview, the researcher made a follow-up field study to verify most of the issues raised for triangulation.

Instrumentation
The researcher designed the instrument for the interview because there was no suitable instrument available for adaption or adoption in Ghana.The instrument was reviewed by four-member panel of professionals who had expertise in criminology in the area of human trafficking and other criminal issues in Ghana.In all, four initiating questions with follow-up questions were used as interview guides.The initiating items were, "Can you tell me more about human trafficking in Ghana?" "Kindly describe how human trafficking is treated in Ghana.""Kindly share your views on human trafficking and the challenges confronting the security services in combating the menace.""On human trafficking and the approach used by Ghana and the international community, share your views with me."The follow-up questions included: "Can you share your views on human trafficking and security of Ghana?" "Can you share your opinions on the legal framework guiding human trafficking victims, the traffickers, and their accomplices in Ghana and the international community?"If you have the right to change the laws on human trafficking in Ghana, what will you come out with?" "Describe the dangers involved in human trafficking in Ghana and the effort by the government of Ghana in curbing the menace."

Trustworthiness and triangulation of the study
To ensure trustworthiness of the study, after the interview, the researcher made a follow-up to the Volta Lake in Ghana where most of the trafficked children were observed engaged in fishing and doing other menial jobs for their slave masters.The field notes from the direct observation were used as triangulation to enrich the trustworthiness of the study.Another form of triangulation was the use of member-checking where the participants were asked to confirm the transcribed interview for their approval.The researcher also reviewed the archival records of the statistical unit of Ghana Police Service for data on human trafficking recorded by the unit.

Research protocol and analysis
After discussing the purpose of the study with the interview participants, the researcher explained the right that they had to opt out as participants before, during, and after the interview.After agreeing to become co-researchers of the study, every participant was given two consent forms to complete and sign the relevant portion of the form to indicate their consent to become participants.Time was scheduled for the one-on-one interview.The researcher asked the participants to express their feelings and opinions during the interview.The data gathered from the interview, direct observation, and documents reviewed were analyzed using wholistic (sententious) approach where sentence clusters were analyzed to reveal the meaning of every sentence to the phenomenon understudy (van Manen, 1990).
During the analysis of the data gathered, every text resulting from the field notes, archival files from the CID office, and the transcripts from the interview were read several times with codes (labels) attached to the text with the aim of developing categories that could enhance thematic analysis with the aid of NVivo 10 qualitative software (Leaviss, 2000).After placing the data gathered into understandable codes, inductive reasoning was used to develop abstractions that gave meaning to the study when the data were placed into the NVivo 10 program for further analysis (Bogdan and Biklen, 2007).The software sorted out and highlighted the texts and phrases into commonalities (Nodes) that led to the categorization and generation of themes.The following findings emanated from the study after thorough analysis of the data gathered.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The following themes emerged after using reiterative Gyamfi 65 approach, with the aid of NVivo 10 software, to categorize the data context during the analysis: 1. Nature and scope of human trafficking in Ghana 2. Ghanaians trafficked abroad 3. Curbing the menace of human trafficking

Nature and scope of human trafficking in Ghana
Statistical data from CID on major crimes in Ghana indicated human trafficking was among the top level of crimes in the country from 2011 to 2014.The other forms of crimes on top of the list included murder, child stealing, rape, robbery, drug abuse, smuggling, counterfeiting, cybercrimes, and illegal possession of firearms.The documents reviewed from the office revealed that in 2013 Ghana was branded as a country of origin, transit, and destination for human trafficking belonging to Tier 2 classification by the international body seeking to combat the menace of human trafficking globally.In 2015, Ghana was branded to belong to Tier 2 Watch-List group of human trafficking that was associated with violence, debt bondage, exploitation and deprivation of the freedom of the victims, confiscation of travelling and other documents.A participant, SP004, indicated, "The government of Ghana had put in only a minimal effort to curb the menace and the trafficking of people has created a security concern that the police must be apt to control."Statistical records at the CID head office on crimes from 2011 to 2014 as reported showed human trafficking offences had been increasing from 2011 to 2013 but declined in 2014 as indicated in Table 1.Among the selected offences, abduction emerged as the most commonly committed offence which registered 3,286 cases followed by child stealing, 451; human trafficking, 396; kidnapping, 269; and smuggling, 88.It was revealed that some of the victims were trafficked from some of the borders of Ghana.A participant who was a senior Police Officer indicated that some of the victims were trafficked from places such as Nigeria, China, and Canada were made to subject themselves, after arriving in Ghana, to sexual exploitation on commercial basis by their traffickers and the dealers involved.Most of the men trafficked to Ghana from other countries were made to engage in forced labor and some of the young ladies also engaged in domestic services.It was revealed that majority of the teenagers who were girls trafficked to Ghana from other countries were forcefully made to indulge in child prostitution.Information revealed from the participants SP001, SP130, and SP170 showed that the traffickers of other nationals to Ghana sometimes sold the trafficked to their exploiters.SP170, for instance revealed that there was evidence to prove that some traffickers used false information to commit the victims to pay between $6,000 and $10,000 per person before sending them to Ghana.A criminal case brought before a circuit court in Ghana held on 23 June, 2009 Data Source: CID of GPS revealed that three Chinese nationals; James, San and Chou were jailed for trafficking some ladies from China on a false pretense that they were to work in a restaurant in Ghana.Before embarking on the trip to Ghana the victims were convinced to pay huge sums of money to facilitate their travelling expenses to Ghana.On arrival the traffickers seized their travelling documents to compel the victims to work to defray any expenses incurred on them during their migration to Ghana.The holding of the case proved that the girls were actually trafficked to work as prostitutes in a brothel belonging to the traffickers and the proceeds earned from the prostitution were received by the traffickers who used some to purchase contraceptives, douches, and some other materials that facilitated their sex trade.In Ghana, it was revealed that internally many people, including some parents sold their relatives to human traffickers at very cheap prices who trafficked the victims to other parts of the country and the trafficked were forced to engage in menial jobs such as fishing, commercial sex, sex tourism, begging, and farming.A participant, SP170, for example, disclosed that, "at Volta Lake in Ghana over 40,000 trafficked children were observed, some of the children were even below 4 years old, and could be observed engaging in fishing and other jobs related to fishing."Another participant, SP190, indicated that "A woman gave her child, for an amount less than $1.00."Direct observation at the Volta lake by the researcher revealed that some of the children had bruises on their faces resulting from how their masters used cane to lash them and beat them mercilessly.Most of the victims seemed malnourished and some of them engaged in serious fishing on the Volta Lake and some of the victims were also observed selling fish at some of the villages near the Volta Lake.
A participant, SP190, further stated that Gambian National Intelligence Agency had disclosed to them that some Ghanaian fishermen smuggled some Ghanaian girls to Gambia who later on subjected them to work as their sex slaves after convincing the parents of the girls that they were sending them to work at decent places for money.The trafficked ladies later confessed to the Gambian authorities that they were forbidden not to have any contact with their parents in Ghana.Sometimes the girls were made to smoke fish and do other menial jobs for their masters.Another participant, SP170, also stated that, information reaching her and confirmed by the trafficked indicates that, "a thirteen-year-old girl indulged in prostitution at a place in Accra could sleep with many men during one night." The findings on the nature and scope of the menace revealed that the Ghanaian situation was similar to the reported cases of human trafficking from many different parts of the world as reported by Shelley and Lee (2007), Kempadoo et al. (2015), and US Department of State (2003).In many different parts of the world including New York (Nack, 2010), Netherlands (Poelmana et al., 2012), and Malaysia (Stanslas, 2010), the police service was engaged in multi-dimensional approaches to limit the scope of human trafficking but the findings from this study indicated that the government of Ghana and GPS had not put in much effort to limit the scope of human trafficking in Ghana as reported by Aning et al. (2013).

Ghanaians trafficked within and abroad
The findings also disclosed that in Ghana there were some agencies engaged by the human traffickers who fraudulently used false pretense to recruit young men and women from Ghana and trafficked them to the Middle East and other countries including Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Israel, United States, and United Kingdom.Some of the people were also trafficked to some other countries in the sub-region including Cote D'ivoire, Burkina Faso, South Africa, and Gambia.Some of the participants, SP170, SP190 and SP191 reported that, on reaching their destination, the travelling documents and other particulars of the trafficked were seized by their traffickers and the trafficked were sent to places where the traffickers bargained with the exploiters in the form similar to the slave trade.The exploiters forced most of the women into prostitution, domestic services and some of the young men were also forced to do menial jobs by their new masters.A participant, SP001 gave account of how the trafficked were treated in a painful mood as follows, "At the destination they are put in a small room and people come to choose them…they sell them for a number of years and treat them as a commodity…they take away all their travelling documents." In certain parts of Ghana, there is a religious and traditional custom known in a native language as Trokosi, meaning "slave of the gods."Two participants, SP190 and SP004 gave account of how a lady was enslaved as a young child trafficked into lifelong servitude for the atonement of purported crimes committed by her relatives.This lady was made to serve in a shrine as a sex slave subjected to forced labor sometimes naked for the pleasure of the priests in the shrines.The lady was released after an NGO had paid some monies to liberate her.The accounts indicated that in 1997 over 5000 young girls were believed to be serving in 345 shrines located in the Southern part of Ghana near Togo.It was disclosed by SP004, in a high tone during the interview that over 30,000 children had been trafficked from the Northern part of Ghana to Accra on the false pretense by their traffickers that they were to be sent to school by their relatives in Accra.On arrival the victims were subjected to work as head porters (known in a local language as "Kayaye") and other menial jobs in order to earn a living and also pay their traffickers (SP004).
The participants reported that many Ghanaians trafficked abroad were sexually exploited similar to the findings from the study by Westcott (2013), used to work as slaves as the report of US Department of States (2013) reveals, and were exploited and had their human rights trampled upon similar to the findings of Farrell et al. (2010).What might be unique about the trafficking of people in Ghana, as revealed from the study, was the cultural aspect where the trafficked served in servitude and made to serve fetish priests in their shrines nude.

Curbing the menace of human trafficking in Ghana
The outcome of the study revealed that GPS had Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU) that was mandated to address all the criminal aspects of human trafficking in Ghana and involving Ghanaians in other parts of the world.The AHTU worked in collaboration with other institutions, including, Ghana Immigration Service, Economic and Organized Crime Unit, the Interior Ministry, Gender and Children's Affair Ministry, some faith-based organizations, the Ministry of Labor, and some non-governmental organizations to curb the menace of human trafficking menace in Ghana.The findings revealed that the government of Ghana was not putting in maximal effort in the fight to eliminate or reduce human trafficking in Ghana.Research conducted by the US Department of State (2013) disclosed that the government of Ghana's effort to provide training to antihuman trafficking law enforcement officials and units was very low.
At the CID department of GPS, a participant (SP004) revealed that, the human trafficking victims rescued by the AHTU and some NGOs could not get shelters to lodge temporary, and did not receive much immediate Gyamfi 67 care due to lack of funds, before being reintegrated with their families.The AHTU was only existing in name because it was not well resourced to enable the unit take the necessary steps to combat the menace even though the officials were highly committed to their work on humanitarian grounds.Most of the activities engaged in by the bodies involved in fighting the human trafficking menace in Ghana were financially resourced by the individuals involved.SP 007 made it known that there was the perception in Ghana that the judicial system was not contributing to the fight against human trafficking because most of the criminals involved were set free due to technical issues raised by their lawyers and prolonged adjournments of the cases.The institutional structures put in place were not strengthened and not much education to draw awareness of the harmful effect of the human trafficking menace was carried out due to lack of funds.
The study outcome revealed that GPS had AHTU that worked in collaboration with some other public institutions and some NGOs to curb the menace of human trafficking.This effort is similar to the efforts of many police forces from different parts of the world (Kempadoo et al., 2015) including the findings from Australia (Pickering, 2004) and North America (Gozdziak and Collette, 2005).The participants revealed that though many individuals in Ghana were committed to work against human trafficking voluntarily, the effort of the Government of Ghana to provide logistical support was very minimal and not encouraging.

Conclusion
The study revealed that Ghana was a country classified as a country belonging to Tier 2 Watch-List by the international community working against human trafficking in 2015 due to the nature, scope or level of human trafficking offences with only a little effort put in by the government and people of Ghana to eradicate the menace.Ghana was a country regarded by the international community as a country of origin, transit, and destination for human trafficking.In Ghana most of the human trafficking victims were made to indulge in prostitution, child exploitation, and menial jobs including fishing and farming due to the conditions that the victims were subjected to by their traffickers.
Ghanaians trafficked abroad were forced to engage in prostitution and other commercial sex, cheap labor, and domestic work where their traffickers and their accomplices enjoyed greater part of what was earned by the trafficked.The police and some NGOs seriously engaged to eradicate or reduce the human trafficking menace in Ghana were not able to redeem most of the victims due to poor financial resources from the government.The police officers and the other volunteers were not able to curb the menace because of lack of facilities to support their effort.The findings revealed that the Ghanaian experience of human trafficking is similar to other experiences from different parts of the world.However, the Ghanaian experience goes further to engage the victims to serve as slaves to fetish priest in a crude method such as serving the priests nude and other services in servitude to atone for the wrongdoings of relatives.

RECOMMENDATIONS
The findings indicate that the effort of the government of Ghana to put measures in place to enable the anti-human traffic organizations to commit themselves very well to fight the menace was minimal and that ranked Ghana as a Tier Two Watch List country before the international community calls for the government intervention in dealing with the canker.It is therefore recommended that the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the Criminal Investigation Department of Ghana Police Service should be financially and materially resourced to motivate the officers to diligently act to curb the menace of human trafficking in Ghana.The NGOs and other organizations involved in the fight against human trafficking in Ghana should be provided with the necessary incentives to push them to take bold steps to reduce or eradicate the menace from Ghana.The laws against human trafficking offences should be strengthened and the judicial system should be made to speedily deal with human trafficking offences.Education of the masses on the problems associated with human trafficking should be intensified for the people of Ghana to acquire more knowledge on the need to contribute to eradicate or reduce to the barest minimum, the menace of human trafficking.Human trafficking is now regarded as a transnational organized crime, and therefore the fight against the menace should involve the highest commitment of the people and the government and their collaborators internationally.Philanthropists are encouraged to sponsor researchers and volunteers who offer themselves to work against human trafficking worldwide.United Nations is expected to take it as a serious project to curb the menace.