Former Director-General of the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA), Richard Anamoo, has expressed skepticism regarding claims that the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) Customs Division may have auctioned some of the alleged missing containers of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG).
Anamoo questioned the logic behind former ECG Managing Director Samuel Dubik Mahama’s reported request to the GRA’s Customs Division to prevent the auctioning of the containers.
He argued that it would be unusual for one government institution to auction the goods of another.
“It sounds very strange to me because Customs is the government, and ECG is also the government. Customs collects revenue for the government, while ECG is owed money by several state institutions, including the central government,” he remarked in an interview on JoyNews’ The Pulse on Thursday, April 3.
“It would be ridiculous for Customs to auction ECG’s goods without considering that the same government entities owe ECG for power supplied to the army, police, hospitals, and schools.”
Mr. Mahama, during a JoyNews interview, refuted claims that the company’s missing containers were truly lost. Instead, he suggested that they may have been misplaced or auctioned by the GRA due to failure to clear them from the port.
According to Mahama, he had written to the Customs Division of the GRA, requesting that the containers not be auctioned.
In response, Mr. Anamoo assured that the missing containers belonging to ECG could still be traced, stressing that relevant institutions keep records of their whereabouts.
He explained that the GPHA maintains records of all container movements, whether they were transferred to another terminal, stored at an external facility, or auctioned due to overstaying at the port.
“What I’m saying is that the containers can be found. If the containers were transferred to another terminal, GPHA would have records. The shipping line will also have records of their movement. Whether the goods were offloaded inside the port and the empty containers taken away, or if they were moved to an external terminal for overstayed containers before being auctioned, there will be data. As long as they remained within the confines of GPHA, there would be records,” he assured.
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