Immigration Arrests 41 Illegal Foreigners

The Ghana Immigration Service in the Bono East Region have arrested forty-one foreign nationals who were also scammed into believing that jobs awaited them in the mining sector and therefore travelling into the country illegally. The 39 Cameroonians, one Nigerian, and then a Burkinabe, one of them a pregnant woman, were rounded in a hideout in a suburb of the Techiman called Hansua, according to GIS.

The Nigerian national has since been repatriated to his home country, investigations having showed that he was first arrested by the GIS in the Ashanti Region but he then managed to return. According to the Bono East Regional Commander of the GIS, ACI Enock Annor Abrokwa, the brain behind the false recruitment named only as Elvis said he works with Q-NET Company and scammed his victims with the promise of securing them jobs in the mining industry in Ghana through the company he works for.

The juicy job opportunity, they were made to believe, pays 1,000 dollars a month and an additional daily household expenditure of seven dollars. He then asked the unsuspecting applicants (foreigners) to fill a form designed with GIS logo and pay between GH 20,000 cedis and GH 50,000 cedis as processing fees to also process their documents. Once the victim arrives at the Techiman, he takes him to an apartment where all his belongings including money, luggage and other personal belongings are taken away.

The victim is thereafter forced to call a friend back home with the same job inducement, a scam which has gone on for the past two months. The victims were kept in a secret location. One of them, before his mobile phone was taken from him, managed to send a Google location to relatives back home about his kidnap. It was this relative who consequently gave the GIS the information leading to their rescue.

Investigations showed that a Ghanaian version of Q-NET Company with a hyphen has since been liquidated and so no longer in operation, the GIS source said. When contacted, the international QNET without a hyphen, which is purely an online business, said they do not deal in direct recruitments. According to ACI Annor, QNET does not transport workers across borders but are purely online business.

The victims are being held in a holding centre awaiting repatriation, ACI Annor said. The agent who led Elvis to rent the apartment and the landlord are on bail assisting the police in their investigation. The Bono GIS Regional Commander has also warned landlords who rent their properties to foreigners without due diligence that, both landlords and foreigners shall be liable for any offence against the country’s immigration laws.