The Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) has rectified challenges that impeded the smooth take off of the paperless goods clearing system at Ghana’s ports.
Freight forwarders last Thursday protested against the excessive delays in clearing their goods blaming it on the systems breakdown at the ports.
Hundreds of angry Freight Forwarders thronged the Longroom of the Tema Port over to protest the delays in the system.
The Customs over the weekend also issued a temporary measure to guide the affected agents to clear their goods.
Speaking to Citi Business News on the development, the Commissioner for the Customs Division of the GRA, Isaac Crentsil explained his outfit has addressed the challenges.
He was however hopeful that all goods would be cleared by close of day today [Monday].
“We cleared a lot over the weekend. We are hoping that by today [Monday] all would have been cleared. The officials at the Tema port are also around releasing containers. So everyone is working to address last Thursday’s challenges,” he added.
GRA workers clear goods over weekend
Mr. Crentsil last Friday conceded that his staff were overwhelmed with the documents that came through the compliance unit hence the delay in the paperless process which was supposed to last four hours instead of two weeks as had been the case previously.
He also assured that the hitches will be sorted out before Monday.
“What happened was that what coming to the compliance office was more than the staff. So there was so much pile of work. So throughout the night…we are seriously working on it to clear the backlog. Hopefully by Monday, things will normalize. The work has doubled. In the manual system, one officer was doing about maybe ten a day but now they are doing about 20 which means the work there has doubled and that overwhelmed the staff over there. But now we have called so many officers into the compliance unit and they have been working from Friday, Saturday and then possible Sunday to clear everything,” he said on Eyewitness News last Friday.
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