The Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) says its members will soon replicate Monday’s action nationwide if government fails to heed to their calls.
According to the Association, they will continue to close down shops belonging to foreign traders in demand for the enforcement of the law that bars foreigners from engaging in retail trade in Ghana.
Speaking to Citi News, the First Vice-Chair of the Greater Accra chapter of GUTA, Nana Kwabena Peprah explained that, this is to register their displeasure at government’s failure to keep foreigners out of the retail market, thus the need to keep locking their shops across the country.
“All the other places are also going to be locking the shops. We are going to do this across the whole of the country. All we are saying is that, Ghana Law says they should not be in the market so, they should move out of the market. Yes, the shops will be continuously locked until they move out of the market. If they want their wares to be moved out we will go and open the shop for them to remove their wares. They should enforce the law. Some of the laws are not supreme than others. We have laws that govern all these things, so they should go by all these laws,” he said.
GUTA
Earlier this year, after Nigeria closed its frontiers to stop the smuggling of products from its neighbouring West African states into the country, GUTA constantly asked authorities to strictly enforce Ghana’s laws banning foreigners from engaging in retail trade.
The Union has on several occasions complained about what it says is the collapse of their businesses due to the invasion of foreigners in the retail sub-sector.
Members of the union say that the government has not fulfilled its promise of ridding the market of such traders despite several appeals.
The Greater Accra chapter of GUTA on Monday locked up several shops at Tip Toe lane belonging to foreigners.
‘Don’t take the law into your own hands’ – Akufo-Addo to GUTA
Meanwhile, President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, has urged the leadership and membership of GUTA not to take the law into their own hands in dealing with traders from Nigeria and other nationalities engaged in retail trade.
In a meeting with the leadership of GUTA on Tuesday, 3rd December 2019, the President stated that “undoubtedly, the law favours GUTA’s position. But, I will appeal that we live in a country where the rule of law works.”
He continued, “It is the State that interprets how the laws should be applied. People cannot take the law into their own hands and purportedly seek to enforce it. If we tread on that line, Ghana will become ungovernable.”
Source : Citinewsroom
