The Ghana-Togo Joint Border Post (JBP) is not serving its purpose as officers idle about part of the day, waiting for an ICT software to make the automated border post functional.

The Noepe-Akanu joint border post in the Volta Region has been commissioned twice already.

First, by former president John Mahama in 2015 and in 2018, it was again commissioned and handed over by President Akuffo-Addo together with the Togo President, Faure Gnassingbe.

Trucks are not able to move in and out of this post at the Akanu Noepe border in the Volta region so, many use the Aflao and Segbe borders as crossing points thereby creating a lot of congestion.

It has been a year since it was commissioned the second time yet it remains dysfunctional.

The development beats drivers of truck and long vehicles who cannot come to terms with the situation and the ensuing difficulties it presents.

They allege that the Customs boss has refused to admit any truck carrying goods through this border.

At the time of Joy News’ visit, the officers were seen attending to very few people manually with small trucks entering the country. Some of the officers were idling.

Kofi Humado, a member of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Parliament and a former Agric and Youth minister is worried about the situation.

Kofi Humado

He told Joy News’ Ivy Setordzi the border post was constructed with funds from the European Union as assistance to ECOWAS to implement its ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme (ETLS) and cannot be left the way it is.

The joint post is supposed to have a joint inspection of goods by Customs officers on both sides using the same ICT software and platform. 

This is to make it easy for data storage and retrieval so that it can be shared.

Mr Humado has appealed to the authorities to make the place fully operational as soon as possible to also enable youths from both countries to have jobs.

This will reduce processing time and allow trucks to reach their destinations early especially if they have perishable goods. It will reduce the time spent by trucks on the Lagos to Abidjan road corridor.

It will also reduce the cost of transport and, therefore, the cost of goods to the final consumer. It will enable ECOWAS to also monitor transactions at the various border points for the collection of the ECOWAS levy.

"At my last visit, structures have been completed and commissioned but little work is going on. Why? The staff complained that the common software to enable them to work has not been installed up till now," Mr Humado queried.

"This is the responsibility of ECOWAS. Also, the Customs of both countries need to put pressure on ECOWAS to install the software,” he said.