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General News of Friday, 8 August 2014

Source: peacefmonline.com

Ebola patients can easily enter Ghana – NPP Scribe

Just recently, the Minister of Health, Dr. Kwaku Agyemang Mensah gave an assurance that he is confident Ghanaians will not see the Ebola virus even though they will hear about it in other countries.

We were also informed about the pragmatic measures installed to tighten security at our border points to ensure carriers of the Ebola virus are left out of Ghana’s territory.

But it has now emerged that the assurance from the Health Minster was merely sweet talk meant to calm nerves for a while. The actual work to be done, according to the General Secretary for the New Patriotic Party, Mr. Kwabena Agyapong, has been abandoned by security and health officials trained to handle the Ebola epidemic at our entry points.

After touring areas in Aflao and Ketu South to get first hand information about how the voter registration exercise has been going in the Volta Region, Mr. Agyapong witnessed how porous our border points had become.

Speaking to Peace FM, Mr. Agyapong noted that people from Togo were trooping freely to Ghana without being questioned by border guards. He lamented that it was only two Togolese officers who had reported to work as at the time he visited the place.

“There is no security agency from Ghana there. I only saw one immigration officer and police from Togo, who had reported to work. Out of curiosity, I asked them where their Ghanaian counterparts were, and they told me Ghanaian officers only report to work once a week."

The situation, according to the NPP scribe, is worrisome not only for voting purposes, but for security reasons.

“It is as if we are one country. Someone can use this opportunity to do something bad to us. Our borders are too porous, and we all know there is an outbreak of Ebola. It means if someone should find his or her way into our country, there is no way of controlling our borders.”

He finally appealed to the Chief of Defense Staff and Inspector General of Police to take a closer interest into the matter.