Story: Kwaku Tsen & Della Russel Ocloo, Tema
The President, Professor John Atta Mills, has said his office has been inundated with complaints of massive financial irregularities and shady deals at the Tema Port.
Expressing the concern during an unannounced visit to the Long Room of the Customs, Excise and Prevention Service (CEPS), the Fishing Harbour and the Golden Jubilee Terminal Point, all in Tema, President Mills said such complaints of impropriety at the ports seriously undermined the government’s efforts at raising adequate revenue for national development.
According to him, the complaints at the CEPS bordered on the under-declaration of goods, stressing that “if we examine the contents of items and their charges we discover that they do not tally”.
“We have the idea of what it costs overseas and, therefore, it beats our intelligence the kind and quantum of charges imposed on imported goods by the authorities concerned,” President Mills said yesterday.
He said developments on the ground seemed to suggest an unholy alliance among organisations which operated at the ports and the public to fleece the nation of much needed revenue.
President Mills noted with concern that the shady deals which went unnoticed at the ports and had existed for a very long time had enriched their practitioners and denied the nation of millions of cedis.
He said it was ironical that such nation wreckers and saboteurs who had siphoned the nation’s wealth were the most vociferous critics of the government’s policies and programmes.
President Mills also wondered about the kind of relationship which existed between suppliers of goods and the valuation authorities, stressing that the nation was being bled of money by people who exploited the seeming loopholes of procedures at the ports to enrich themselves.
He said revenue collected by CEPS, especially at the ports, constituted a significant source of revenue to the government, which was needed to undertake a number of development projects to provide relief for the people.
“We need to raise more money to provide social and economic infrastructure such as roads, schools, hospitals, bridges to improve the quality of life of the vast majority of the people and CEPS is one of the most important source,” President Mills said.
He advised personnel of CEPS to help the government to expose the bad lots amongst them who were tarnishing the image of the service.
Addressing fishermen and women at the fishing harbour, President Mills said the government would not renege on its promise of breathing new life into the economy to improve their social conditions.
He said the government inherited a disjointed economy, which it had spent the past year to fix in order to provide the people more opportunities through which they could improve their lives.
President Mills, therefore, enjoined them to exercise restraint, since the government had put in place measures tailored to provide jobs for the people.
“The government is not going to be distracted by unfortunate comments from those who have run down the economy yet complain that the economy has come to a standstill,” he said.
Representatives of the fishing community complained of lack of fishing inputs and pre-mix fuel, which, they said, was undermining their fishing activities.
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