Paperless System Witness Grand Sabotage By CEPS Officials

Some customs officials of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) are said to be deliberately sabotaging the paperless system at the Tema Port.

Previously, Customs Clearance Valuation Reports (CCVR) were released within 24 hours, but some customs officers are now unduly delaying that action in order to demand 'bribes' from clearing agents, some of which are paid to them via mobile money or personally at selected locations.

According to reports, they are deliberately delaying the process of clearing cargoes at the Tema Port to instigate the unregistered freight forwarders against government for introducing the policy.

Bizarre manipulations
At the Golden Jubilee Terminal in Tema, investigations conducted by BUSINESS GUIDE revealed that with the use of codes for compliance officers, officers are able to disclose the identities of compliance officers to freight forwarders for a fee for them to manipulate the new system to reduce duty and under declaration of cargo.

Some agents, who contact compliance officers at the Customs headquarters, present them with money secretly to have their cargoes cleared without any delay.

Blunder
Last week, officials working on the paperless system at the ports attributed the numerous challenges to human errors.

According to them, the lack of due diligence on the part of some officers led to challenges on Thursday, September 7, 2017 at the Long Room of the Tema Port.

It would be recalled that freight forwarders, importers and exporters at the Tema Port protested against the paperless system at the Long Room due to difficulties in clearing the goods.

New system faultless
But speaking to Citi Fm, an Accra-based radio station, a Communications Officer for the paperless project, Paa Kwesi Ekumah said: “When we investigated, we got to know that it has nothing to do with our system. The new process is still as intact, as we have told the world it is. We realized that it they were human errors.”

Wrong information
He continued that “now somebody somewhere failed to do his work well. The system has to be fed with appropriate information. At the end of the day, the system will have to think and operate for everybody. But what happened is that those handling the operations have failed to use the current protocol and for that matter the machine is sitting unaware of the examinations going on.”

“That is how people exit the Tema Port. We will make sure that all these are routed back through the system or we find a way of making sure that they operate, because it doesn't really make sense to keep everyone at the port once payment has been made,” he added.

Deliberate sabotage
Meanwhile, an IT expert, Sam Sackey alleged that the hitches that occurred in the implementation of the paperless system may be due to sabotage.

Sources at Customs told BUSINESS GUIDE that the clearance of cargoes, which was supposed to be simple, had become rocket science under the pretext that the system was down.

“My colleagues are doing this to force government to use the former system, alongside the paperless transaction, in order for them to still have an interface with the compliance officers.”

The sources revealed that some officers charge as much as GH₵15,000 while others demand cars from freight forwarders to reduce the duty.

Gov't must crack whip
According to the source, “Government should start dealing ruthlessly with officers over their failure to fix the system and you will be shocked that all the challenges will be over and everything will be smooth.”

He added that “even the clearing agents do not want to go through the agony with custom officer to have their cargo cleared.”

“If clearing agents are not declaring the right goods and under-declaring, the duty of the officer is to ensure the law works and possibly apply the disciplinary actions. If they start jailing people for under declaration, I believe all these will cease and the State will make money for development,” a senior Customs officer, who pleaded anonymity, indicated.