Two persons have been arrested and handed over to the Marine Police Unit of the Ghana Police Service for allegedly falsifying GPHA revenue documents and inflating port clearance charges.
The Ghana News Agency gathered that the two Paul Amesu Regatta, a clearing agent and David Kamassah, an internet café operator, were apprehended after they allegedly altered GPHA port charges of GHs 1,749.11 to read GHs 4,491.59
Regatta, is said to have inflated the cost so that he could make a profit of GHs 2,642.48 with the assistance of Kamassah, instead of presenting the actual amount of the port handling charges to the importer who contracted him to assist in clearing his goods out of the port.
Colonel Joseph Punamane, Head of Tema Port Security, who handed over the two to the Police, indicated that the importer who was not happy about the high charges sought clarification from the GPHA revenue centre where he discovered that the document his agent presented to him was fake and the figures had been inflated.
Colonel Punamane described the act as dangerous as according to him, such persons created the impression that port charges were very high “so we found it imperative to deal with them by handing them over to the police”.
Meanwhile, Mrs Esther Gyebi-Donkor, General Manager, Marketing and Corporate Affairs, GPHA, has urged importers who do not trust charges presented to them by their agents to seek the necessary clarification from GPHA.
Source: GNA
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Because the Government is doing everything possible to reduce the financial burden on importers, these corrupt clearing agents are finding ways to steal from the importers and turn round to blame the government. We live in a country where few people wants to be rich at the expense of the nation.
'The Ghana News Agency gathered that the two Paul Amesu Regatta, a clearing agent and David Kamassah, an internet café operator, were apprehended after they allegedly altered GPHA port charges of GHs 1,749.11 to read GHs 4,491.59' I miss the JJ days. They would have been DEAD by now. Their charges will be 'ECONOMIC SABOTAGE". WICKED anti-government people. They want to do that to tell NDC and their EVIL supporters that the port is hard!
This is long overdue, I just keep wondering why importers are not allowed to go through clearing of goods at the port themselves. All these cry of high ports charges will all have been over. I remember when a clearing agent made away 35,000gh cheat on me sometime ago. All I could do was to change agents and that was worse. I now change agents on every imports claiming I will maintain them whenever they make a good job. The cheating has reduced though but not stopped.