The Member of Parliament for Manhyia North in The Ashanti Region, has warned foreign nationals in Ghana to discontinue from engaging in unlawful businesses.
In a statement on the floor on ‘involvement of foreigners in Ghana’s retail trade, its implications and critical issues’, Collins Owusu Amankwah, reiterated that “foreign citizens in Ghana should be strongly urged to refrain from engaging in illegal or unlawful acts but rather strive at all times to be law abiding”, with a caution sentence that, “this is the only way to have a peaceful stay in Ghana”.
He also asked Ghanaian traders at Suame, “do not take the Law into your hands, the Police Service, Immigration Service, the Ghana Investment Promotion Authority and other key agencies who are mandated to handle such issues should be left to do so”
According to him, the least that must be done now is for the security operatives to engage the local traders at Suame in order to find a lasting solution to their problems so as not to raise tensions again.
He maintained…, “my considered opinion is that this is the only way to ensure an amicable settlement of this misunderstanding which has the potential to mar the very cordial relation between Ghana and Nigeria and, indeed Ghana and other countries”.
Mr. Amankwah noted that an attempts at enforcement of the Law on retail trading by foreigners should not be allowed to assume “xenophobic dimensions for, if it did, it portrays Ghana in negative terms. Besides Ghanaians in other countries may suffer the same fate”.
Recently, occurrences in the Ashanti Regional Capital, Kumasi, Suame Magazine to be precise, where Nigeria Nationals who engage in Local Retail Trade and have shops at Suame are being accused by the local traders of violating the stated provisions of the Ghana Investment Promotion Law (Act 865), a section of which provides that “foreigners are not allowed to engage in retail trade”. For purportedly violating the Law, the foreign nationals are being forcibly evicted from the market by the local traders at Suame Magazine.
This is in a bid to force authorities to enforce Laws on the nonparticipation of foreigners in LocalRetail Trade.
“The approach being adopted by the indigenous traders is unlawful and arbitrary, and to say the least does not bode well or the long standing relations between the two sister countries. It also smacks of citizens taking Law Enforcement into their own hands when that is the sole duty of the security agencies. The MP insisted.
Ghana is a signatory to various ECOWAS Protocols and Conventions on the free movement of persons, goods and-services in the sub-region and this enjoins all to abide by the tenets of the internationally agreed Protocols and Conventions, added.
Story by Edzorna Francis Mensah
