Minority calls on President to open land borders
The Minority Caucus in Parliament has called on President Akufo-Addo to take urgent steps to ensure the re-opening of Ghana’s land borders to allow for free flow of persons and goods across the ECOWAS sub-region.
According to the Minority, there cannot be any justification for the continued closure of Ghana’s land borders.
Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, made the call when he addressed the media in Parliament House over the closure of Ghana’s land borders and its impact on the free movement of persons and goods across the sub-region.
Mr Iddrisu also stated that though the country was not out of the woods yet, there was the need for a return to normalcy with the movement of goods and services through the borders.
He urged President Akufo-Addo as the Chair of ECOWAS to do what was needful and to give meaning to the resolutions he chaired for ECOWAS to pass and to allow and facilitate the free movement of goods and services between Ghana and its neighbours and the rest of the world.
“Therefore, whatever proactive measures government needs to take to re-open the land borders must be done… there cannot be any justification for the continued closure of Ghana’s land borders,” he added.
Meanwhile, the Minority Leader has also described as fleecing and rip-off of Ghanaians and international travellers into the country for being charged $150 for COVID test by Frontiers Health Services Limited at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA).
He, therefore, called on the government to urgently review the $150 charge for the COVID test by Frontiers Health Services at the Kotoka International Airport.
He said there was nowhere in the world did anybody pay $150 for a COVID test, saying “the least one pays is $50 and highest not more than $100.”
Mr Iddrisu questioned why non-Ghanaians are being compelled to pay $150 in the name of the COVID test, saying “this raises the question of using COVID as a money-making enterprise instead of a public health epidemic that needs the collective effort to combat and deal with.
“We do not think continuously persons travelling to Ghana from abroad must be made to pay $150, we consider that a rip-off, prohibitively high and even the $50 that Ghanaians travellers pay for COVID test should be made free,” he said.
Source: GNA