{"id":1033308,"date":"2022-03-24T18:22:59","date_gmt":"2022-03-24T18:22:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/03\/24\/traders-urge-government-to-tighten-security-and-monitoring\/"},"modified":"2022-03-24T18:22:59","modified_gmt":"2022-03-24T18:22:59","slug":"traders-urge-government-to-tighten-security-and-monitoring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/03\/24\/traders-urge-government-to-tighten-security-and-monitoring\/","title":{"rendered":"Traders urge government to tighten security and monitoring"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\n Accra, March 24, GNA \u2013 The Trading community in Ghana has called on the Government to put in place strict measures to monitor human movement following the Cabinet\u2019s agreement for the reopening of the country\u2019s land borders.<\/p>\n
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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.<\/div>\n
Led by the Ghana Union of Traders\u2019 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.<\/div>\n
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.<\/div>\n
This was to also prevent the infiltration of militants from Burkina Faso (North of Ghana), which experienced a coup in January.<\/div>\n
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.<\/div>\n
He called on President Akufo-Addo to leverage his influence as the Chairman of the\u202fEconomic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to get the other countries to open their borders so that earnest business could commence.<\/div>\n
\u201cIf 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.\u201d<\/div>\n
Dr Obeng explained that the reopening of the borders would facilitate the movement of people and goods, thereby, enhancing cross border trade.<\/div>\n
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\u2019s economic recovery from the ravages of the pandemic.<\/div>\n
\u201cThe 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.<\/div>\n
\u201cThis 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,\u201d he said.<\/div>\n
The GUTA President stressed that opening the borders would also hold enormous benefits for local manufacturers whose goods are patronised in neighbouring states.<\/div>\n
\u201cMost of the goods that our Ghanaian manufacturers produce find themselves out to Togo, Benin, and Nigeria, so in the long run, it\u2019s going to benefit not only the traders but also the local manufacturers.\u201d<\/div>\n
Prior to Cabinet\u2019s acceptance of the reopening of the borders, there had been several calls on the government to do so, with some traders embarking on demonstrations.<\/div>\n
GUTA for example recalled the promise by leaders of the ECOWAS to have closed borders in the region opened in January.<\/div>\n
Last year, traders on Ghana\u2019s border with C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire embarked on a protest, asking the government to lift the land border closure.<\/div>\n
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\u2019s frontier with Togo.<\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Accra, March 24, GNA \u2013 The Trading community in Ghana has called on the Government to put in place strict measures to monitor human movement following the Cabinet\u2019s agreement for the reopening of the country\u2019s land borders. Cabinet, at the end of its first-quarter meeting in the Eastern Region last week approved the reopening of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1033309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[1090,4243,2177,6198,4181,4975],"class_list":["post-1033308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-government","tag-monitoring","tag-security","tag-tighten","tag-traders","tag-urge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1033308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1033308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1033308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1033308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1033308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}