A starving labourer from the farming community of Ampiah-Ajumako in the Central Region has been jailed for six months for stealing a bunch of plantains.
Kojo Gyasi was sentenced to serve In Hard Labour at the Winneba Local Prison when he could not pay a fine of Ghc 1,200 when he was arraigned before the Ajumako District Court.
According to the father of one, he was unemployed and worked as a labourer on people’s farms and construction sites.
“The only work I could do is a labourer job and farming because it is a deprived area. At a point I no longer got calls even to do the labourer job which forced me to steal,” he told crimecheckghana.org during a visit to the Winneba Local Prison.
Gyasi said he was starving and had no choice but to steal a bunch of plantains to feed his child and his girlfriend.
“Farm owners did not pay well for working on their farms for them. They paid whatever amount they desired. The foreman I used to work for ignored me and bought labourers from Accra to work in the village so life was difficult for me. I am begging the owner of the plantain I stole to forgive me,” he pleaded.
Gyasi had spent two months in prison when Crime Check Foundation (CCF) met him during its prison visits.
The young man was lucky to be counted among 47 inmates of various prisons who benefited from Actress Nana Ama McBrown’s initiative to pay their fines for their release through CCF’s Petty Offenders project.
After breaking the news of his release to him, he asked for God’s blessing for the actress and appealed for support to go into farming so that he could reintegrate properly into society.
Rudolph Nandi
