Six persons have been arrested for smuggling fuel into the country.
Officials of the Ghana Navy arrested the suspects upon tip-off off at the fishing harbour in Tema.
The suspects, according to the Navy, were in the process of transferring fuel from a canoe into a tanker when they were arrested.
Service Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Navy, Commander Veronica Arhin confirmed the arrests to Citi News.
[contextly_sidebar id=”t1MdC6avbdJ9oIbu5HTtvVW9z3PdMtX1″]“We received information that there was a transfer of fuel from one vessel to the other. So we became suspicious, and a team was deployed to go and verify.”
She said when the team got to the site, they saw three different tankers receiving fuel from a canoe.
“The canoe was transferring fuel to one of the tankers, so we arrested them, and the other two were about taking off, and they were also arrested,” she added.
Commander Arhin in a Citi News interview also called on other stakeholders to support them to clamp down on such illegal activities.
“We need to get other stakeholders involved. We are not the prosecuting authority so we’d have to hand them over to the appropriate authority,” she added.
Ghana loses $200m in 2 years over fuel smuggling
Ghana is said to have lost $200 million in both 2016 and 2017 as a result of the smuggling of fuel into the country, the National Petroleum Authority has revealed.
According to the Head of Research at the Authority, Shiela Abiemo, there is no record for 300,000 metric tonnes of fuel used in the country and no taxes are paid on them.
The illegal activity which is done through depots mainly in Tema and Takoradi is one of the major challenges affecting the petroleum sector.
The trend is said to be a syndicate between black marketers and border officials.
Ghana Navy detains Nigeria oil vessel
The Ghana Navy in April 2018 detained two Nigerian oil vessels for engaging in the illegal transfer of oil in Ghanaian waters around Kpone in the Greater Accra Region.
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By: Nana Oye Ankrah/citinewsroom.com/Ghana