Freight Forwarders are still agitating over the rolling out of the paperless policy at the ports.
The program Citi Business News understands is scheduled to take off on Saturday, September 2, 2017 instead of the September 1.
The businesses argue that the policy risks a major setback due to the low levels of education from the implementers.
The concerns were raised at a workshop organized by the various implementing agencies on the process.
“This is the first day every freight forwarder is seeing the end to end demonstration of the paperless transaction…it is a nice idea but we are appealing for it to be postponed for at least a year…If not, we will crash and will not know what to do,” one of the agitated freight forwarders lamented.
Another also retorted, “If the port officials are facing such challenges in this demonstration, how do they expect us to manage the situation when the challenges arise?”
The paperless clearing system is a directive from the Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia.
It is among others expected to reduce corruption by limiting the level of human interaction and also cut back on the turnaround time for businesses clearing their goods.
But reacting to the concerns by the freight forwarders, the Commissioner of Customs, Mr. Isaac Crentsil assured that his outfit will continue training the various stakeholders to reduce any level of apprehension.
“Because you are our people we will be working with, we will continue engaging you in various training…I will apologise for this issue but even when we start rolling out the system, the education will continue,” he asserted.
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By: Pius Amihere Eduku/Elvis Washington/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana