Cotonou, Benin, April 14 (Bloomberg) -- Government and aid agency officials in Benin are preparing to help as many as 250 children who are believed to have been sold into slavery and are aboard a ship off the west African coast, the BBC and AFP said.

The ship has been seeking a port for a week after it was turned away by nearby nations, Gabon and Cameroon. It is expected that the ship will return to Benin where it left port some two weeks ago, Agence France-Presse said.

Action will be taken against both the crew of the ship and the parents who sold their children, Benin government minister Gaston Zossu told the British Broadcasting Corp.

The children from the poor West African nations of Benin and Togo are believed to be caught up in the lucrative trade in minors sold by poor families and forced to work abroad on plantations or as domestic servants. The number of children aboard is unclear, with officials estimating the human cargo is between 30 and 250, AFP said.

Child slavery persists in parts of West and Central Africa where, prompted by desperate poverty, parents sell their children for as little as $15 on the promise that they will work in richer West African states and send money home.

Farmers in Gabon and Ivory Coast with cash crop plantations pay up to $340 per child worker, Cable News Network said. Thousands of children between the ages of nine and 12 are said to be working on plantations in the Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa producer.

Every year border officials in Benin stop scores of children being transported to work abroad, Reuters said.

Esther Guluma of the United Nations Children's Fund, UNICEF, told CNN the children were likely to have been taken from their families with false promises of cash.

The ship is registered in Nigeria though an Interpol investigation found it was rented by a Benin national, Guluma said.
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News reports on CNN state that officials fear that the children could be thrown in to the ocean to prevent the arrest of the slave traders.

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For I know that my redeemer liveth,
and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.
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Linda