IMMIGRATION OFFICERS ASSAULT TRADER (SPREAD)

Eight officials of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) have brutally assaulted a trader, leading to the trader losing consciousness.
The trader failed to give the officials, stationed at the Jawu-Warf Border in the Jomoro District in the Western Region, GH¢ 5.00 they had demanded.
The amount was instituted illegally by the officers.
The victim, Mr Kofi Acquah 45, has been transferred from Half-Assini Government Hospital to Effia-Nkwantah Regional Hospital due to the critical nature of his condition.
Two of the eight officers were identified as Red and Konduah, who was said to be the head of those on duty the night the incident occurred.
When the Daily Graphic news team visited the victim at the hospital, he could hardly talk, breathe or move any part of the body as he was in pain at the least movement or touch.
His colleague, Mr Yaw Owusu, who was at the hospital, told the Daily Graphic that they had been paying GH¢1.00 any time they had to cross the Wharf border to Champoom Market at Cote d’Ivoire.
However, when they got to the border last Wednesday, the officials told the traders that they had increased the tip from one to five Ghana cedis and Acquah did not have enough money to pay it.
He, however, managed to raise three Ghana cedis.
“The GH¢3.00 that Acquah offered to the officials made them so angry that they described him as arrogant and followed that up with a slap and a kick,” Owusu said.
He added that the officers beat and kicked Acquah until he fell down, without his colleagues intervening for fear of receiving the same treatment.
The victim, Mr Owusu said, became unconscious and one of the officers, known as Red, dragged him into a small room at the post.
A source within the immigration service officials at the border that night confirmed the incident, adding that when the victim asked for water after regaining consciousness, Red went and bought six sachets of water and forced the victim to drink all.
The source said that after drinking, other officials - whose names the source refused to disclose - started kicking him on the lower abdomen with their boots. As a result, the victim vomited all the water, through both his nose and mouth, and later collapsed again.
Two civilians who could not stand the sight of the torture went to his rescue. They offloaded the contents of the cargo truck they were travelling on and rushed the victim to Half-Assini Hospital.
When asked what might have brought about the violent action from the officers, an eyewitness, who was also at the hospital, told the Daily Graphic that the inability to pay the amount angered Konduah, the officer extorting the money.
When contacted, the Western Regional Commander of GIS, Mr Robert Quartey, confirmed the act and deplored it as unacceptable, adding, “I immediately dispatched my investigators to the border to assess the situation”.
“We have received several complaints of extortion at the entry points and the various service commanders in the region are working on how to flush out the bad lots,” he noted.
When asked to define the role of immigration officers at the entry points, he said “theirs is to ensure that travellers are carrying valid documents as required by the laws of the country”.
When the Daily Graphic moved to the lorry stations, some of the passengers who frequently travelled through the borders said it had become a ritual for officers at the border posts in the region to demand money and they made a lot of money from the practice.
“Can you imagine about 50 to 60 passengers in a vehicle paying GH¢1.00 each to these officers, not forgetting that hundreds of vehicles cross daily?” one trader asked. They added that “we pay because everybody pays and if you refuse to, you will be delaying other travellers who have paid”.