The Member of Parliament for Jomoro Constituency, Dorcas Affo-Toffey has urged the government to consider reopening the land border at key entry points in her constituency to alleviate the economic stress being suffered by her constituents.
Making her maiden submission in the House today, Wednesday, 24th March, 2021, Mrs Affo-Toffey said there was an “urgent need to reopen and regularize land border crossing at key entry points in the Jomoro Constituency such as Elubo, Jaway wharf, Newtown, Ellenda wharf and other border towns in Ghana.”
According to her, this move was necessitated by the distress her constituents are currently going through resulting from a loss of capital and livelihoods, decreased social cohesion, increased theft cases, emigration, and hunger among other things.
She stated that the Kotoka International Airport, which accommodates comparatively bigger volumes of traffic, is in operation due to certain measures put in place to check entrants into the country with respect to COVID-19.
According to her, the Ghana Airports Company Limited, on its website, indicates that 2,110,593 passengers used the Kotoka International Airport in 2019 alone.
She further stated that the British Broadcasting Cooperation (BBC) also state on their website that, an average number of 98,000 people have entered Ghana through the KIA every month since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
These figures are much bigger than the 4.000 people who entered Ghana every month from the Ivory Coast before COVID-19.
According to the Member of Parliament for Jomoro, all the measures put in place at Kotoka International Airport can be replicated at our borders with the added bonus that a competitive antigen testing entity, whose pricing will be commensurate with current international market pricing, can be employed unlike what she described as the exorbitant antigen testing regime at the KIA.
“I say this by taking into consideration the fewer entrants per month of persons using the land borders for trade and other businesses in comparison to the volumes of persons using the Kotoka International Airport per available statistics,” she added.
She, therefore, called on the government to, as a matter of urgency, open up the borders whilst stepping up adequate surveillance and effective monitoring in those areas.
For her, these measures, if adhered to and instituted at our borders, will not only help in reviving the dwindling socioeconomic activities but will also help in the fight against the virus.
She added that this will further boost Ghana’s Pan-African credentials as the champions of the ECOWAS protocols on the free movement of persons and goods, which is cardinal to our integration agenda.
