GUTA to protest against foreigners engaged in retail business

The Ashanti Regional branch of the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) is to stage a protest in Kumasi on Tuesday, October 24, 2017 against the invasion of the retail trade by foreigners.

Speaking in an interview with Nana Kwabena Ampratwum, the host of Otec fm's morning show ‘NYANSAPO’ on Monday, the Deputy Ashanti Regional organizer for GUTA, Tony Afoakwa said the protest is to remind the government to enforce laws that forbid foreigners from engaging in retail trading, which is reserved for Ghanaians.

The protest, which will take the form of a walk, will start from Suame, through Bantama and finally to Adum where there will be a press conference to express their disappointment at the government for not enforcing the laws.

Mr Afoakwa stated that “We want the government as a matter of urgency to stop these foreigners from retailing, enforce the laws on retail, just as it is doing in the textiles industry, enforcing the pirating law by prosecuting offenders”.

“How can we sit in our country and watch Nigerians, Indians and others take over our business”, he questioned.

Mr Afoakwa believed Nana Addo’s administration, which believes in the rule of law, will enforce the law to bring sanity in the retail business as it has done in the mining industry.

He indicated that the growing involvement and dominance of foreign nationals in the retail trade had serious implications for Ghanaians, collapsing some retail businesses.

“It is of this view that we want the government to protect the local business from collapsing, by enforcing the retail laws”, he added.

Mr Tony Afoakwa disputed reports that GUTA is afraid of competing with the foreigners, hence pressuring the government to ban them from foreign, saying, they just want the law to work.

“We just want the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC), whom we have accused of failing to rid Ghana’s retail market off foreigners, to sit up and doing”, he concluded.