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The Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) is appealing to government to provide the division with adequate personnel to effectively man the frontiers of Ghana’s Eastern Corridor, which has become one of the transit areas for most unwholesome goods into the country.

Senior Revenue Officer at the Preventive Unit of the division, Emmanuel Adjei, who made the appeal, explained that because of the wide nature of the frontiers, coupled with its porous nature, there was the need for more personnel to do effective surveillance and patrolling across the corridors.

He stated that the lack of personnel makes way for some unscrupulous people who do business to push all manner of goods and services that are unwholesome, expired, dangerous and injurious for public consumption.

He was speaking to the media during a destruction exercise carried out by the division with the assistance of Accra Metropolitan Assembly waste management to destroy seized damaged, expired and unwholesome products, which are at a total cost of $50,000.

“We are here to destroy items that customs in the course of its normal operations have uncovered to be unwholesome, damaged, contaminated and expired, which are injurious and not safe for public consumption,” he emphasised.

He noted that at customs, what they basically do is revenue collection, but part of their mandate is to protect society.
The items, he explained, were uncovered doing re-examination of items that were intercepted during monitoring to access levels of compliance from frontier stations.

“Most of these items are coming from the Eastern Corridor. During the course of re-examination to do a monitoring and access compliance levels, we found out some of these items were part of the consignment for clearance and they do not meet standards for public use so we have intercepted and here to destroy them,” he mentioned.