Mr Maxwell Koffie Lugudor, Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for Ketu South, has charged security agencies at the Aflao Border to create the right impressions about Ghana in the minds of travellers.
He said any first-time traveller to Ghana through the busiest border would rate the country by the treatment meted out to her or him, things seen or heard about it was important the security installations and personnel, the first points of contact and exuded a good image.
Mr Lugudor said this during his familiarisation tour to security agencies at the border, including the Customs and the Domestic Tax Revenue Divisions of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA), the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS), the National Intelligence Bureau the Defence Intelligence and the Police Service.
He said he needed travellers through the Aflao Border which “serves as the second gateway to Ghana” (after the Kotoka International Airport) to return to their home countries with a picture of Ghana as a beautiful place and where they were treated with dignity stressing the critical role of Customs Division and GIS offices in that regard.
“We always say Ghana is the gateway to Africa. I’ll say Ketu South is the second gateway to Ghana and you our security officials play critical roles. Someone who had come to Ghana won’t say “when I entered Ghana, I was treated badly” but rather will say, ‘when I came to Ghana, I was treated badly.’ We’re going to work together towards that.
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I want Ketu South to be one of the beautiful places in Ghana so that when travellers enter, they see a beautiful Ghana. Just as you’ll go to Burma Camp and other military installations and residents there dare not drop any litter, we must replicate the same here. For that, the security agencies must come together for a cleanup exercise and I assure you that I’ll personally partake in it to send the right signal to our people.”
In responding to Assistant Commissioner of Immigration (ACI) Frederick Baah Duodu, Aflao GIS Boss regarding the challenges his personnel continued to face in enforcing the President’s border closure directive considering the uniqueness of the Aflao Border, the MCE said being a native, he understood the situation and noted that a soon to be conveyed Municipal Security Committee meeting would discuss such issues.
With three masters in security, the first, Security and Justice Administration, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology; the second, Statecraft and National Security Studies, Haifa University, Israel; and lastly, Defence and International Politics from Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College, Mr Lugudor told the Ghana News Agency that “security of my people is paramount” and promised to work closely with relevant stakeholders to address underlying conditions that could threaten the peace and security of his people.
