KIA/IMM/PR/091/V.1 10th September.

2019

TO ALL NEWS EDITORS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NEWS RELEASE

GIS -KIA REGIONAL COMMAND RECEIVES 22 DEPORTEES FROM SAUDI ARABIA

The Kotoka International Airport (KIA) Regional Command of the Ghana Immigration
Service within a week has received a total of twenty two (22) deportees from Saudi
Arabia on board Ethiopian Airlines Flight.

The deportees, comprising one (1) male and twenty one 21 females aged between
21-38 years and working as domestic helps and a driver were deported for staying
illegally. They arrived with Travel Certificates issued by Ghana’s Embassy in Saudi
Arabia.

The deportees, who are mostly Primary School, Junior High School (JHS) and Senior
High School (SHS) leavers, have been in Saudi Arabia since 2015 and 2017. According
to them, they were detained at a Deportation Centre in Saudi Arabia close to four
(4) months before their onward deportation to Ghana.

Regional distribution of the Deportees are, one (1) each from Oti, Volta, Bono,
Western, Central and upper East, six (6) from the Greater Accra, six (6) from the
northern, and four (4) from the Ashanti Regions.

1
Narrating their ordeal in an interview, some of the ladies said their passports were
seized by their hosts upon arrival claiming they owned it because they paid for it,
and sometimes made to over work 24 hours, accused wrongly for crime they did not
commit, assaulted, abused sexually and fed once a day with bread resulting in some
complaining of severe stomach pains.

One lady by name Georgina [not her real name] aged 25 also narrating her ordeal
amidst tears said she had to escape whilst her host was out of town to seek refuge
at Ghana’s Embassy in Saudi Arabia.

Her advice to the youth was that, they should stay in the country and work and not
to be overly interested in traveling, particularly to the Gulf States, because some
don’t even live to tell their stories.

However, the general public is being advised to be beware of connection men, who
will lure them into the “seeming juicy deals”, mentioning huge sums of money as
the monthly pay which is non-existent.

- End –

BARBARA SAM (ASST. SUPERINTENDENT OF IMMIGRATION)

PUBLIC AFFAIRS OFFICER/KIA
0244790137