Traders urge government to tighten security and monitoring

Accra, March 24, GNA – The Trading community in Ghana has called on the Government to put in place strict measures to monitor human movement following the Cabinet’s agreement for the reopening of the country’s land borders.

Cabinet, at the end of its first-quarter meeting in the Eastern Region last week approved the reopening of land borders, which had been closed for two years to curb the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Led by the Ghana Union of Traders’ Association (GUTA), the community lauded the Government for measures it adopted to contain the COVID-19 pandemic and said the proposal to open the border was welcoming.
However, they pointed out that it was imperative for the country to tighten security along its borders for effective tracking, monitoring and screening of people who entered the country due to the pandemic.
This was to also prevent the infiltration of militants from Burkina Faso (North of Ghana), which experienced a coup in January.
Dr Joseph Obeng, the President of GUTA in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in Accra said ahead of the reopening, of the land borders, the Government should collaborate with other border countries to make the exercise worthwhile.
He called on President Akufo-Addo to leverage his influence as the Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to get the other countries to open their borders so that earnest business could commence.
“If we need to have a harmonised system through the ECOWAS sub-region where we can all manage this disease and the protocols, then we have to think through and do it as fast as possible.”
Dr Obeng explained that the reopening of the borders would facilitate the movement of people and goods, thereby, enhancing cross border trade.
He said the reopening of the borders would help curtail revenue losses due to the smuggling of goods along the border regions and support the country’s economic recovery from the ravages of the pandemic.
“The closure of the border in a way brought some protection for us from the transfer of the virus, but it also brought some trade challenges, and its opening will make cross border trading activities start in earnest and bring relief to us.
“This will serve us in our cross-border trading activities, in the sense that even when the borders were closed, people still found unorthodox means to do their trading at the expense of their lives and other risks involved,” he said.
The GUTA President stressed that opening the borders would also hold enormous benefits for local manufacturers whose goods are patronised in neighbouring states.
“Most of the goods that our Ghanaian manufacturers produce find themselves out to Togo, Benin, and Nigeria, so in the long run, it’s going to benefit not only the traders but also the local manufacturers.”
Prior to Cabinet’s acceptance of the reopening of the borders, there had been several calls on the government to do so, with some traders embarking on demonstrations.
GUTA for example recalled the promise by leaders of the ECOWAS to have closed borders in the region opened in January.
Last year, traders on Ghana’s border with Côte d’Ivoire embarked on a protest, asking the government to lift the land border closure.
The protest in Elubo, the West of the capital, Accra was the second after traders took to the streets of Aflao in the Volta region, to get the government to open the country’s frontier with Togo.