Prime News Ghana

GRA put thousands of dollars’ worth of goods to flames

By PrimeNewsGhana
Goods in flames
Goods in flames
Shares
facebook sharing button Share
twitter sharing button Tweet
email sharing button Email
sharethis sharing button Share

The Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) on Tuesday put to flames some goods worth several thousands of dollars.

According to the GRA, the over US$50,000 worth of goods destroyed were smuggled and had long outlived their expiry dates.

The destroyed goods included alcoholic beverages, cigarettes, beverages, pharmaceuticals, Indian hemp, among others.

Speaking to the media after the destruction - Chief Revenue Officer of the Customs Division of the GRA, Emmanuel Adjei expressed the conviction that the agency’s continuous destruction of fake or illegal goods in the country will serve as a deterrent to those engaging in these smuggling of counterfeit good.

He stressed that they were only, “destroying the items that customs in the course of its normal operations uncovered to be unwholesome, contaminated or expired. These goods are injurious and not safe for public consumption. Most of these items are coming from the Eastern corridor with a street value is about $50,000. We have packaged Indian hemp, we have pharmaceuticals that are contaminated, expired and compromised by storage”.

Highlighting some challenges confronting the effective operation of the division –particularly, in its fight against smuggling of fake goods, he cited the inadequate personnel to be impacting negatively on their ability to carry out the exercise frequently.

The GRA officer however noted that the destruction exercise was expensive and therefore, called on government to recruit more personnel into the service.