The Police in Navrongo in the Upper East Region have arrested a woman for attempting to smuggle 1,000 (50kg) bags of fertilizer meant for Planting for Food and Jobs (FPJ).
Upper East Regional Minister Tangoba who confirmed this on A1 Radio’s Reporters’ Visit programme on Friday, July 26, 2019 said Aisha Ibrahim was arrested on Thursday at about 6:30PM.
According to the minister, officers of the Bureau of National Investigation (BNI) on Thursday informed the police that a woman was in the process of smuggling fertilizer to Burkina Faso. She said when the police rushed to the scene; they saw two trucks, one with Ghanaian registration and the other with Burkinabe registration.
Ms. Tangoba said the truck with the Ghanaian registration was loaded with bags of fertilizer with PFJ stickers embossed on the bags while the Burkinabe truck was loaded with fertilizer without stickers embossed on the bags.
“Now this is what they were doing; they were removing the stickers of Planting for Food and Jobs embossed on the bags of fertilizer, tearing the stickers into pieces, and after they’ve removed and torn the stickers into pieces, they would transfer it onto the Burkina Faso truck. These fertilizer bags were the 50 kilogram bags. As at the time they [police] got there, they had transferred 350 bags from the Ghana truck after removing the stickers onto the Burkina Faso truck and then what was on the Ghana truck was 650 bags.
So in total, the articulated truck had brought into Navrongo, thousand bags of 50 kilogram weight fertilizer and they had transferred 350 onto the Burkina Faso truck. They were in the process when the police got there.” The Regional Minister narrated.
The minister said, according to the police, the driver of the Burkinabe truck had absconded before the got to the scene and was yet to found. However, the driver of the Ghanaian truck and Isha Ibrahim, the prime suspect, were arrested.
She explained that the 50kg bags of fertilizers are not allowed into the region, stressing that, “One thing you should know is that, the 50kg bags are not even allowed into our part of country. So any time you find 50kg bag of fertilizer, that fertilizer is illegal.”
Ms. Tangoba commended the two security agencies – the BNI and Police through whose intelligence and efforts led to the interception of the fertilizer and subsequent arrest of the prime suspect.
She said after the arrest, the police visited stores and anywhere they found 50kg bags of fertilizers for PFJ, they confiscated same and sent them to the police station.
The minister said, “I called the Director for Crops of Ministry of Agriculture because I didn’t understand why they should be stickers and not embossment on the sack itself and he explained that the fertilizers they used last year, some were left over. Last year as you are aware, we didn’t have embossment on the sacks, is one of the reasons we had a lot of smuggling across because you couldn’t separate what was for Planting for Food and Jobs from what was not meant for Planting for Food and Jobs. So we had left overs.
So this year, what they did was that, well, if you had left overs in your warehouse, print stickers and put on the sacks to indicate that these are for Planting for Food and Jobs. So it is those types of fertilizers that they brought into Navrongo, all of them with stickers on them.
But apart from the stickers, we also had tags. Each fertilizer that is for Planting for Food and Jobs has a special tag that other fertilizer bags don’t have. So even if you remove the sticker, those tags are there, they are sewn onto the bags and each tag has its own unique serial number. So when we went there, even those that they had removed the stickers from, they had the tags that are unique for only those that Planting for Food and Jobs fertilizer bags.”
The waybill as narrated by the minister indicated that the fertilizer had been transported from Tema in the Greater Accra Region to Navrongo. This, she said was another reason that made it worrying because anybody who brings fertilizer into the region knows the due process to follow.
“When you bring fertilizer from outside the region, when you enter the region, the Regional Minister and the Regional Director for Agriculture should take a look at your waybill, one; and then inspect the fertilizer, ensure that, what is on the waybill corresponds with what is on the truck. We will ensure that everything is right and then I am expected to endorse your waybill, the regional director is also to endorse. When you get to the district where you are expected to offload the fertilizer, the District Director [of agriculture] and the District Chief Executive will do the same thing that we did.
In this case, we had no idea about how the fertilizer entered the region. But from the documents they have, it originated from Tema. Two, as I said, we are not allowed to bring 50kg bags into this region. All the 1000 bags are 50kg.”
This is the second time this year the region has recorded smuggling of fertilizer meant for PFJ programme. Last month, two articulated trucks were impounded with a total of 4,000 bags of fertilizer meant for PFJ programme.
Ms. Tangoba observed the trend of the smuggling indicates that there is a cartel behind it and issued a stern warning that the security agencies are on high alert to clamp down on such unscrupulous persons.
The prime suspect in the Thursday’s attempted smuggling; Aisha Ibrahim, is expected to appear in court on Monday, July 29, 2019.
Source: A1 Radioonline.com|101.1MHZ|Ghana
