Dr Abdallah Ali-Nakyea, Senior Lecturer, School of Law, University of Ghana and a Director of Ali-Nakyea & Associates, says that in the current age of digitalization, the government should consider deploying drones for border patrols.

According to him, the government has successfully used drones to deliver medicines and believes the same technology can be utilised to monitor the movement of goods and people.

• Read also: JoyNews exposes Customs officials demanding bribes in ‘Porous Borders’ Hotline Documentary

Investigations by JoyNews revealed that customs officials are accepting bribes to allow traders to smuggle goods from neighbouring countries into local markets. These officials accept bribes ranging from $20 to $200, enabling traders to evade taxes on their goods.

Speaking on JoyNews AM show, Dr Ali-Nakyea said that “In fact, that is why the documentary says porous. You may not be able to patrol every nook and cranny of our boarders, but at least the drones would tell us which section of the boarder the incident is rise, and then we can concentrate because any time they change their route, we would be able to get information.”.

Dr. Ali-Nakyea suggested that informants reporting these illegal activities should receive an informant award.

He noted that informants face the risk of exposure by the very people they report to, which puts their lives in danger. 

“Some have a challenge on getting the amount promised in the law or in the practice direction of the revenue, so they relax instead of telling us where we are losing the revenue and how we are losing it; they would go to the other side and take the money, so they don’t even report, so we need to address facets of all this to be able to deal with the border issues.”