World Vision Ghana is calling on the government to grant it tax exemptions to enable it to support governments efforts in the fight against COVID-19.
According to World Vision, irregular charges at the ports are deterring donor partners from supporting its efforts.
In an interview with Citi News after presenting some personal protective equipment valued at GHS134,000 to the KIA Green Light Health Center at Samang in the Fanteakwa South District, Joshua Baidoo, the Southern Operations Manager of World Vision said a tax exemption from the government will encourage donor partners to support the COVID-19 fight.
“For World Vision as a humanitarian organisation, we have a number of supporters overseas and donors who have been supporting us and one of our major challenge has been that we receive a lot of educational items, health items among others from these donors and we have to pay huge taxes on these items. So our plea is for government to grant us these tax exemptions so that it will serve as attractions to our donors to support us being it health equipment, educational materials for children, agricultural implements among others”.
“For instance these items we donated today, we couldn’t bring them out from the country but had to procure them here locally meanwhile others were willing to supply us for free but the huge charges at the port prevented them. So if government can come in and help us with tax exemptions, it will motivate more donors to give us supplies so we can also help majority of the people in need.”
On his part, the Deputy Regional Director of Health in Charge of Operations, Peter Boateng, who was appreciative said the PPE will boost the confidence of health workers in the discharge of their duties.
“We want to show appreciation to World Vision for the kind donation of personal protective equipment. Not too long ago, we were here for the handing over of this facility to the Ghana Health Service from them and we are grateful for their continuous support. We want to assure World Vision that we will also do our part to relay their tax exemption plea to our management so they can also deliberate on it and send it to the appropriate authorities to handle it”.
Joshua Baidoo who also indicated that management of World Vision is worried about the increasing number of positive cases of Coronavirus called for a concerted effort to reduce the spread and fight the pandemic.