Five persons suspected to have breached data protection laws have been arrested by a joint team operation led by the Data Protection Commission (DPC) and the Ghana Police Service.
The arrests were made on Thursday, September 28, as part of the DPC’s ongoing enforcement operations to crack down on businesses and institutions that are collecting and using personal data without authorization.
The suspects were picked up from various institutions, including Care Flight Ghana, the Morning Star School, Kabfam, Embassy Gardens and Grace Homeopathy Clinic.
The Director of Regulatory Compliance at the Commission, Quintin Akrobotu, addressing the media after the operation said, “As we indicated in the last enforcement action we undertook on August 14, we explained that all institutions and businesses that collect data from individuals for their business operations are expected to register with the data protection commission.
And remain compliant with personal data as far as the provision of data protection is concerned. Today, we continued with that exercise and we have actually picked up five institutions. We first went to Care Flight Ghana, Embassy Gardens, Morning Star School, Kabfam and Grace Homeopathy Clinic for non-compliance. What we expect from institutions is to bring their processing under the radar of the commission for supervision”.
The DPC is an independent statutory body established under the Data Protection Act, 2012 (Act 843) to protect the privacy of individuals and personal data by regulating the processing of personal information.
The Commission provides for the process to obtain, hold, use, or disclose personal information and for other related issues bordering on the protection of personal data.