Port Paperless System in Ghana, the Way Forward: GCNET or UNIPASS/ICUMS

• Main Authors: James Yaw Osei-Owusu, Rosli Mahmood, Murali\ Sambasivan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Africa Development and Resources Research Institute (ADRRI) 2020-09-01
• Series: Journal of Arts and Social Sciences
• Subjects: paperless system; seaport; UNIPASS/ICUMS; GCNet
• Online Access: https://journals.adrri.org/index.php/adrrijass/article/view/544

Ghana has two seaports; Tema and Takoradi and since their inception in 1928 and 1963 respectively, these ports have undergone a lot of reforms all with the aim of making them effective and efficient to compete favourably with other ports in the world and also help increase the revenue of the government. Ghana Community Network (GCNet) introduced by the government of Ghana with their trading partners West Blue in 2003 was solely responsible for the collection of revenue at the two seaports in Ghana. Through the hard work of West Blue, most of the internal processes of doing business at the ports of Ghana were synchronized into one system thus making Ghana ports to go paperless on 1st September, 2017. However, on 30th May, 2020 GCNet was asked to shut down their operations at the ports of Ghana, a new software or system called UNIPASS/ ICUMS owned by Ghana link network services and CUPIA were asked to take over. This did not go down very well with most of the stakeholders involved in the clearing chain at the ports of Ghana thus leading to a whole lot of protests and demonstrations at the ports. This study therefore sought to delve into finding out what the challenges were with respect to using the UNIPASS/ ICUMS and then offer solutions to curtail any future eventualities any time a new software or system is being introduced at the ports of Ghana for clearing goods and doing business.