ILLICIT DRUGS WORTH £214m SEIZED At KOTOKA, DAILY GRAPHIC, TUE APRIL 5, 2011, (BACK PAGE)

Story: Della Russel Ocloo

Illicit drugs totalling £214 million have been seized at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) since the introduction of the Operation Westbridge project in 2007.
Operation Westbridge was set up by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) of the British Government, in conjunction with the Narcotics Control Board (NACOB) of Ghana, to arrest drug smugglers who used the KIA as a gateway to the United Kingdom (UK) and other European countries.
In an interview with the Daily Graphic in Accra, the Executive Secretary of NACOB, Mr Yaw Akrasi-Sarpong, said the programme was aimed at giving technical and operational expertise to Ghana’s intelligence operatives to deal with the drug trade.
Prior to the introduction of the project, the West African sub-region was classified as a region for class ‘A’ drugs by the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime Annual Drugs Report, 2006.
According to Mr Akrasi-Sarpong, the project had brought about a significant improvement, particularly in the area of organised crimes and narcotics.
He indicated that although the installation of a body scanner at the airport had also limited trafficking, the increased volume of flight schedules had seen the profiling of travellers becoming enormously difficult.
He said the system where airline operational offices were also located inside the departure halls, with people accompanying travellers into the halls for no apparent reason, also needed to be examined thoroughly.
Mr Akrasi-Sarpong said the intelligence community ought to come up with a comprehensive programme and project that would bring meat to government policies on drug trade, while making sure airport security was of topmost priority over commerce.
“If one was entering the Castle (seat of government), there were various security processes one had to go through,” he noted and wondered why the situation at the airport was different.
“It is for this reason that NACOB has submitted a proposal to the government for the installation of an additional body scanner at the VVIP section to check abuse of the unit, for which the government has pledged to release funds shortly,” he explained.
Although concerns had been raised over the malfunctioning of close-circuit television (CCTV) cameras at the airport which people believed was a major setback in the fight against the narcotics trade, Mr Akrasi-Sarpong was optimistic that the Ghana Airport Company, as the owners of the facility, would adequately address the issue.
He said persons working at the KIA must be made to have backgrounds in security intelligence, as the current situation where employees had limited knowledge was not encouraging.
Expatiating, he said the practice whereby people manning strategic points at the airport indiscriminately moved from their desks also ought to be checked.
Mr Akrasi-Sarpong said plans were underway by the board to install security technology at various points that would give NACOB and its collaborative agencies an insight into everyday occurrences at the airport.