We’re not sabotaging paperless port policy - Freight Forwarders

The Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders (GIFF) has debunked media reports suggesting that their members are sabotaging government Paperless Port Policy which begun earlier this month.

Addressing a press conference in Tema on Tuesday, President of GIFF Mr. Kwabena Ofosu Appiah who expressed the anger of its members said the report sought to create some form of animosity between them and the public.

“We are referring to the Paperless Port Operations and the unfortunate twist of a report in the Monday 11th September Edition of the Daily Graphic captioned ‘Freight Forwarders Frustrating Paperless Operation at the Port.

“To say “importers and agents in their quest to declare lower values of imports in order to beat down duties on imports have conceived their own means of generating their invoices locally”, is an unfortunate blanket statement to make ; straight jacketing all importers and agents as fraudsters to say the least,” Mr Ofosu Appiah said.

He expressed surprise at the conduct of the reporter saying “For the award winning Della Russel who has access to us 24/7, to quote anonymous and faceless customs sources in a bid to create public disaffection for freight forwarding fraternity and subject us to public ridicule and opprobrium, when she is not particularly alien to the port process baffles us.”

Contrary to claims by the Daily Graphic that members of GIFF are the once who are sabotaging the policy Mr. Ofosu Appiah outlined a number of issues which he said had caused the challenges being encountered so far following the implementation of the paperless port policy from 1st September, 2017.

“The absence of an effective Call Centre, responding to end to end issues, difficulties in transmission of CCVRs from PAARS to GICCS, extreme delays at Compliance; ranging from 48hrs to over 7 days and counting, Misalignment of the old and new process resulting in confused process by-passes, leading to the virtual evaporation of declarations in the system, failure of GPHA booking and billing system and a 5 hour custom announced system shut down on Wednesday the 6th of September, 2017,” Mr. Ofosu Appiah enumerated.

He explained that members of GIFF are fully committed to the success of the paperless projects and urged the public to discount the story.

Mr. Ofosu Appiah appealed to the government to as matter of urgency address all the challenges emanating from the implementation of the paperless policy to bring relief and comfort to freight forwarders, importers and exporters.