Twelve (12) people, according to citinewsroom.com, are currently in police custody following an attempt to bribe personnel of the National Anti-Cocoa Smuggling Taskforce at Kwahu Adawso, in the Kwahu South Municipality of the Eastern Region.
The 12 are alleged to be part of a cocoa smuggling syndicate and were arrested upon intelligence, after they tried smuggling out 400 bags of cocoa beans.
According to the report, it was a joint operation of personnel from the Ministry of National Security, the Formed Police Unit and the Ghana Cocoa Board that intercepted two trucks, with registration numbers AS 2653-12 and GS 4220-12, loaded with the cocoa beans bound for Togo.
Those arrested include drivers, mates, boat operators and loading boys who were busted, while attempting to offload the cocoa beans.
The news outlet quoted the chairman of the Kwahu South Municipal Security Council, Emmanuel Atta Ofori Senior, as having commended the security for still going ahead to arrest the suspects, after they were offered GH¢80,000 in bribes.
“We have arrested 12 people who are currently in police custody and I am keenly interested in the outcome, so I will monitor the proceedings to make sure the sanctioned laws of the land are tested.
I am, therefore, appealing to the prosecution and judiciary to swiftly adjudicate issues of national concern like this particular one, in order for all necessary sanctions and punishment to be meted out to the culprits when found guilty, because they are causing financial loss to the state.
“Last month, we made a similar arrest on the ferry, which was a cargo vehicle. We have arrested a tipper truck too, but today it is a Kia Rhino smuggling cocoa, which is an indication that the smugglers are really in business.
I want to use this medium to announce to them that the Kwahu South Municipal Security Council will not relent but pursue them anytime they want to transit their smuggled goods through our municipality”, Atta Ofori reportedly told the media.
The Chronicle is deeply worried that despite the arrest of people involved in this illicit trade of late, much publicity that have been given to these arrests and subsequent editorials, the smugglers are still mustering courage to smuggle the commodity.
As we indicated in our previous editorials, these are nation wreckers and should not be treated with kid gloves should they be found guilty of committing the crime. Cocoa smuggling has been with us for years, but its intensity of late is mind boggling.
Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) has projected to buy between 650,000 and 700,000 metric tonnes of cocoa during this crop season – 2024/25. This is against the backdrop of over 1, 000,000 metric tonnes the country produced in the 2020/21 season. This means that our cocoa production continues to dwindle, but instead of all of us putting our shoulders to the wheel to reverse the unfortunate trend, all what some of us are interested in is to smuggle the commodity.
Meanwhile these are the people who will be complaining bitterly that their communities lack basic infrastructure such as schools, hospital, clinics and roads among others. They made these comments forgetting that they are the very people contributing to the problem.
Ignorance of the law, they say, is not an excuse – so whether these smugglers are well educated or not, it’s immaterial – what is important is that they are economic saboteurs who must be dealt with according to the dictates of our laws.
But, as we previously indicated in this column, COCOBOD should also take it up itself, to educate the public especially in the cocoa producing areas about the negative effect the cocoa smuggling is having on our national economy. As we have always argued, cocoa is the backbone of our national economy, so we all have the duty to fight against the cancer of smuggling.
