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About 4,092 Ghanaian migrants retuned from Libya in 2017, figures from the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) has revealed.

According to Chief Superintendent James Hayford Boadi, the Brong-Ahafo Regional Head of the Immigration Information Centre of the GIS, most of the returnees were from Brong-Ahafo.

Instead of leaving the country through the appropriate routes, the migrants risked their lives through the Sahara Desert to Libya and crossed the Mediterranean to Europe, he said.

Speaking at the opening session of a returnees’ needs assessment workshop on Monday in Sunyani, Chief Superintendent Boadi said irregular migration was becoming a national challenge which needed concerted efforts to tackle.

The Ghana Centre for Jobs, Migration and Re-integration (MIAC) of the German Development Cooperation (GIZ) in collaboration with the Ministry of Employment and Labour Relations organised the two-day workshop attended by about 85 returnees.

Most often Ghanaians voluntary returnees arrived without significant awareness of the changed dynamics in the country after years and sometimes decades of absence.
Research showed that the alienation experienced in the country had a direct effect on the ease of reintegration.

Currently, about 800,000 Ghanaians live and work outside their home country.