Operation Westbridge yields results

Story: Albert K. Salia
Operation Westbridge, a collaboration between the governments of Ghana and the United Kingdom (UK) to combat the drug trade, has yielded 69 arrests and £40 million in narcotic seizures since its launch last November.
The haul comprises 244 kilogrammes of cocaine, 1.2 kilogrammes of heroin and 1,148 kilogrammes of cannabis with street values of £37 million, £280,000 and £3.4 million respectively.
The 69 arrests comprised 20 Ghanaians and 49 foreigners, mostly Nigerians, British and Dutch.
Of the arrests, 16 were made in the UK while the rest were made in Ghana.
A Minister of State at the Ministry of the Interior, Nana Obiri Boahen, announced this in Accra yesterday at the closing ceremony of a training workshop being part of the Global Container Project.
The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between it and five of Ghana’s security agencies on July 7, this year for a Joint Port Unit with personnel drawn from the Narcotic Control Board (NACOB), Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), Customs, Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS), the Ghana Police Service and the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) to profile all containers arriving at the country’s ports.
The training programme formed part of the MoU signed with the view to equipping the selected personnel with the requisite skills and technical capabilities to undertake the project.
Ghana is the second country after Senegal to join the Global Container Project to help deal with the scourge of drug trafficking.
Nana Boahen said recent events had put the issues of drug abuse and trafficking at the centre of the debate in the country as one of the real socio-economic plagues, which could seriously and negatively affect the very foundation of the country if not tackled holistically.
He said the potential negative effects of the menace had united Ghanaians to wage a war against the problem with the aim of rendering drug abuse and trafficking in the country the most unattractive activity for both Ghanaians and foreigners.
He said the government, the initiator of the drug war, had intensified its efforts and was determined to ensure its success.
“In the prosecution of this war, we have come to the realisation that an adequate response to the drug scourge and its attendant social, economic, health and security challenges is conditioned on a balanced vision, translated into a unitary policy that cannot be achieved unless all national institutions and international community in the field co-ordinate their efforts,” he noted.
Nana Boahen said Ghana recognised that unilateral action, conceived in a purely nationalistic context, could compromise the integrity of the international drug control system, stressing that “no country working alone can solve the drug problem”.
He said the government appreciated the collaboration between Ghana and other countries and international organisations at both the bilateral and multilateral levels as those collaborations had indicated the capacity to yield better results as evidenced in the Operation Westbridge programme.
He described the Global Container Project as long overdue since 90 per cent of the world’s cargo was shipped by container and that criminals and terrorists could easily exploit the method to smuggle illegal goods.
According to him, the benefits of the project would put drug traffickers and abusers out of business and at the same time reduce drug-related crimes such as money laundering, armed robbery and human trafficking.
Nana Boahen entreated the heads of agencies involved in the project to give their best support to the project to ensure its smooth operation.
He urged the trainees to exhibit the competencies that they had acquired to ensure a drug free Ghana and an advancement in the global fight against drug trafficking and terrorism.
The Spanish Ambassador to Ghana, Mr Jorge Montealegre, said due to the alarming problem of drugs in the country, members of the European Union (EU) community in Ghana decided to support the government to fight the drug menace.
He pledged the commitment of the EU to supporting the fight if there was evidence of co-ordination and co-operation among the various security agencies.
The Regional Law Enforcement Advisor of UNODC, Mr Flemming Quist, described the scourge of the drug problem as serious because large quantities of drugs had been stockpiled in the sub-region awaiting export to Europe and America.
He said Ghana had gained notoriety as a drug trafficking country.
He said international co-operation and information sharing was the best solution to deal with the problem of drugs.