Corruption infested Harbors in Ghana

The selection of Mr. Wallace Kofi Akondor by President John D. Mahama as the Acting Commissioner of Customs Exercise and Preventive Service (CEPS), along with other senior officials at the Ghana Revenue Authority is a good move to resuscitate an agency that has been mismanaged for far too long.

I hope this reshuffling exercise would right the wrongs of the past and not follow the path of the corruption-riddled Ghana Police Service and the notorious Lands Commission.

As long as I can remember, there has never been transparency enforced at the shipping ports of Ghana and this behavior has cost the government millions of dollars in revenue. We in Ghana love to boast of the resources we have but these resources are worthless if they are mismanaged and employees bilk the system for their personal benefit.

Since the early nineties when I started shipping goods to my beloved country, I can ascertain that there has never been a single instance when my shipment had arrived without difficulties with clearance. Here is one of the several headaches I have had over the years at the Tema Harbor.

Several years ago, I purchased a container in order to ship personal items, under the mistaken assumption that the goods would be under lock and key and, thus, safe. My clearing agent reported that when he went to take delivery of the shipment, the container seal had been forced open by some port officials by the time he presented them with the keys to the padlock. Needless to say, several items had been stolen.

In recent days, port officials have resorted to other devious means of stealing from shipments to relatives and loved ones back home. When the goods arrive, customs officials insist the cargo should be unloaded from the containers for inspection. And in the course of this so-called inspection that generally takes place with several officers in the presence of one or two agents of the shipper. This is where the greedy officers pilfer and in some instances destroy precious items like glassware.

The question is: What are these officials looking for? Contraband? Commercial-grade merchandize? No one really knows because the laws are so opaque that not even the customs officials can tell you what they are enforcing. And more importantly, what use do bills of laden serve, if officials resort to the pettiness of opening every barrel or crate just so they can snoop? What happened to computerization? If we claim to be participants in the global economy, is it too expensive for a bona fide country to purchase scanners to randomly inspect the thousands of containers that pass through the ports? How come the rich and the well-connected get it so easy out of the port while others receive the short-end of customs bureaucratic stick?

What happened to the Presidential Special Operations Task Force the president formed last year, and headed by Mr. Prosper Douglas Bani? This special task force was established with the mandate to carry out investigations and plug loopholes that had over time caused the government to lose revenue only to land into private pockets.

Ultimately, this is a matter of governance. There are best practices out there around the globe. Can you imagine this nonsense happening at the New York Port Authority, the Los Angeles Port Authority, and Ports in Singapore, Shanghai, London, Rotterdam, and many more? If the Mahama administration wants to have one single positive legacy, it should select just ONE thing: the Ports and airports and run them to international standards. They should look to the example of Singapore, under Lee Kwan Yu who made it a national policy to do things well, very well, one project at a time. They started with a top notch airport and port system and beefed up their infrastructure so things like electricity will run 24/7 without the nonsense of Dum So. In less than a generation, it attracted investments to make it one of the Asian Tigers.

When governments want to do nothing, they set up task forces and commissions knowing that by the time they settle down to work, people would have forgotten about the incompetence that brought the matters to light. In places where democracy is actually practiced, there would be parliamentary over sight sub-committees whose duties would be to oversee all manner of governmental affairs, from education to forestry, including the ports. Regional and District officers are elective not appointive as it is presently in Ghana. So office holders work for their constituents rather than at the pleasure of the President.

If we got our act together, the ports are uniquely poised to generate revenue. And since we are surrounded by land-locked countries, a well-managed ports system will be a bonanza to the national coffers. No amount of loans and foreign aid will replace the hard thinking and strategic planning that would be required to ensure that we’re running things like a modern state and not merely having these institutions in name only and derided by our trading partners who curse us under their breaths for our incompetence. At any event, the president must revamp the Special Task Force he established in 2013 to oversee things at the ports if that’s the pathway he chooses. However, if he is really serious about a better Ghana, a modernized, transparent ports system should be one key personal mission. That, together with a master plan for infrastructure development will turn our massive ghettos into real cities.

In the meantime, the three areas that need to be improved are;

1. The total computerization of the agency.

2. Simplifying the protocols for clearing goods at the Tema Harbor in particular. Publish these protocols on the internet and let sunshine vanquish the cockroaches lurking in the dark to bilk the country.

3. Establish an investigative system to expose and prosecute the crooks who are giving our country a bad name and record.

Despite its commendable performance in the area of rule of law, Ghana continues to struggle in the fight against corruption, according to the World Justice Project (WJP). But I am optimistic that if the Mahama administration makes it its mission to have our ports work like other modern ports, insist on transparency and efficiency, we’d be on our way to meriting the moniker: “the little country that could.”

Thomas A. Djan

California, USA