Members of the Eastern Importers Association (EIA) have called on the presidency to call on what they describe as a ‘gang’ of uniformed personnel claiming to be national security operatives, who were operating on the Accra-Ho-Accra-Aflao route to order.
According to them, they have suffered enough “brutalities, illegal arrests, inhumane treatments, harassments and extortions” at the hands of these so-called ‘Security Operatives’ believed to be a wing operating under the ministry of finance for the past eight months.
The EIA members intimated that the activities of these security operatives were adversely affecting their businesses.
Addressing a well-attended press conference in Accra yesterday, General Secretary of EIA, Isaac Okweesi Armstrong, who could not hide his frustrations, explained that they have been quite for all this while and could no longer bear the “constant harassments, unwarranted beatings, sometimes at gun-point by these personnel.”
“We are coming out now to let the good people of Ghana as well as the presidency know the kind of ordeal we have been subjected to for the past eight months while going through our normal business through your medium which we believe reaches far and near,” he added.
The general secretary of EIA lamented that aside from the inhumane treatments by these operatives, they also sometimes forcefully seize their goods to the amazement of officials of the Customs Division of the GRA at check points.
“They also leave our goods at the mercy of the scorching of the weather even though most of our goods are perishable in nature,” he added.
He revealed that by the time the goods are released, most of them get spoiled or damaged thus making them run into huge debts. This situation, he bemoaned had made members incapable of paying back their loans (principal + interest) to the banks.”
The group is demanding that the operatives be dissolved immediately and instead constituted a committee of all stakeholders including executives of EIA to investigate activities of the operatives.
Members of the association believed that the operations of the ‘gang’ claiming to be national security operatives have not only made the process of movement of goods cumbersome but also added to the ‘corruption’ in the system.
They therefore, appealed to Government to make the process of moving goods from the eastern corridor routes “flexible”, so that they will not be forced out of business.
“There is no doubt for whatsoever that our association has been a huge revenue generating base for the GRA especially on the Eastern Corridor route, through taxes and duties members pay for national development. Additionally, the association provide direct and indirect workforce for thousands of people. Thus, any policy taken by the state should be a policy that will expand and grow businesses but not to kill existing one,” Mr Armstrong reiterated.
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