New Security Measures At Kotoka Airport

Recent security measures enforced by the National Security Committee at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) in Accra are yielding positive results with regard to the safety of passengers arriving at the airport.

Investigations by “The Evening News” have confirmed that passengers arriving at KIA no longer have to fear that thieves and other undesirable elements might snatch their luggage from them.

Security sources at KIA say porters who hitherto assisted passengers to convey their luggage to the Departure and Arrival Halls have been banned from operating at the airport, passengers now have to carry their own luggage to ensure their safety.

“The Evening News” sources have also established that currently, only registered companies like the Labour Enterprise Trust are allowed to ferry passengers to and from the airport.

Registered transport companies at the KIA are required to have car radios so that their movement could be monitored.

A visit by “The Evening News” to the KIA at the weekend confirmed that all unauthorized kiosks on the property of the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) around the airport have been removed.

Additionally, make-shift-hide-out of squatters who use the airport areas for drug peddling and “wee” smoking have been dismantled.

According to a top security official “we will not rest on our oars in the fight to clamp down thieves and armed robbers who operate here at the airport”.

Early this year, the Acting Minister of the Interior, Dr. Kwame Addo Kufuor, who is also the Defence Minister, tasked the National Security committee to strive to stem the ride of armed robbers following attacks on passengers arriving at the KIA.

A meeting chaired by Dr. Addo Kufuor urged the KIA authorities to get rid of all porters from the Arrival Hall and authorized selected commercial vehicles to operate at the airport.

The meeting also called for increased security presence in and around KIA to ensure that unauthorised persons and vehicles desisted from loitering around the area.

Already, the police post at the KIA has been upgraded to a Police Station with all the necessary facilities to enhance security at the airport.

Some passengers “The Evening News” spoke to at the KIA expressed satisfaction about the new security measures being enforced at the airport.

Reginlad Mensah-Bonsu, who was travelling to London, said: “In Europe, for instance, no porter had the right to enter any of the Arrival Halls of the airports to assist passengers to convey their luggage to anywhere”.

Mary Arthur, a passenger on her way to Vienna said: “The transport companies registered at the KIA to ferry passengers to and from the airport is a very good step in the right direction”.

According to Ms. Arthur, she was robbed at gun point in a taxi she hired at the KIA when she arrived in the country last year. She said she could neither identify the taxi-cab nor the driver.

Some of the porters claimed that they depended on the airport to survive and wondered how they could make ends meet but admitted that “there are bad nuts among us”.

One taxi driver also said, “the measures are stiff but it is the making of some of our colleagues”.