Saboteurs Could Hijack Paperless System – Analyst Warns

The Government should not discount the threat of saboteurs as it implements the paperless clearing system at Ghana’s ports, an IT analyst, Sam Sackey, has advised.

As Freight Forwarders lament delays in the clearance process of their goods, Mr. Sackey said he believed there are people working at the port who want the new system to fail.

“What I see going on, from some information I am getting, is that there are sharks in the system. They like to swallow things. They want to cut corners,” he noted on the Citi Breakfast Show.

In view of this, he said the network infrastructure needed to be adequately protected to prevent any possible tampering.

“What we need is to have physical security at such places. It is not just having a tag and walking to places… you must have physical security.”

Mr. Sackey further underscored the need for backup systems when networks or the power failed and added that “these things must be secured other than that, someone can sit somewhere, turn some power off and then it jams the whole thing.”

He reminded that “there are people out there who do not want this to work. They make tons of millions of Ghana Cedis a year… there are lots of them on both sides; whether customs officials, whether the clearing agents, it cuts across.”

“So definitely, there will be a set of people who will not want this work so that they can have their way for a certain amount of time and say let’s do piloting.”

Need for call centres

Mr. Sackey also said the absence of call centres in the implementation of the paperless system in anticipation of challenges was a misstep in the planning process.

“One thing we are lacking are contact centres and call centres… these problems are going on; how do people even address the? Who do you call? Do we have a number to call?”

“People will have agitations with the new system but what is causing that and how do you address them? So first of all, in everything we do, we should have call centres,” he said.

The government began the implementation of the paperless clearing system on September 2 to speed up the process of clearing goods and plug loopholes.

But barely a week after the project commenced, the agitated freight forwarders complained that the paperless process is slowing down their work.

The freight forwarders before the implementation complained that they were not educated on the processes involved, and had called on the government to suspend it.