Officials working on the paperless system at the ports have attributed the numerous challenges surrounding the system to human error.
According to them, the lack of due diligence on the part of some officers caused the challenges that was witnessed on Thursday (7th September, 2017) at the Long Room of the Tema Port.
Freight forwarders, importers and exporters at the Tema port on Thursday massed up at the long room, agitating over difficulties in the paperless system introduced to ease the clearing of goods.
But speaking to Citi Business News a Communications Officer for the paperless project, Paa Kwesi Ekumah said the problem has since been rectified.
“When we investigated, we got to know that it has nothing to do with our system that is our system is not inefficient. The new process is still as intact as we have told the world it is. We realize that it was a human error. Now somebody somewhere failed to do his work well. The system is supposed to be told that this is what is going on. At the end of the day the system will have to think and operate for everybody. But what happened is that those handling the operations have failed to use the current protocol and for that matter the machine is sitting unaware of the examinations going on.” he explained.
He continued “That is how come people could not exit the Tema port. We will make sure that all these are routed back through the system or we are finding a way of making sure that they operate because it doesn’t really make sense to keep everyone at the port once payment has been made.” he added.
Meanwhile an IT expert, Sam Sackey alleged that the hitches that occurred in the implementation of the paperless system may be due to sabotage.
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By: Jessica Ayorkor Aryee/citibusinessnews.com/Ghana