Chamber of Pharmacy, Ghana Upset Over UNIPASS Platform

The Chamber of Pharmacy, Ghana and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association of Ghana have noted with concern the recent difficulties associated with import clearance at Ghana’s ports. 

The cumbersome processes under the new system operated by UNIPASS have proven very costly for our members in terms of time and actual value of service at the ports. 

The virtual manual process has resulted in delays in the clearing of pharmaceutical imports, which has come with the risk of high cost in demurrage. The frustrations of the slow and unwieldy processes caused by the system rather than the importers have also placed our members at the mercy of the same system, with the prospects of further cost in penalties of various kinds. 

Besides, our members are also faced with the risk of losing some imports to expiration altogether, if the products are not cleared in good time. It is our fear that some of the pharmaceutical raw materials could reach their expiry dates before they are cleared from the ports if the snail pace manual process is not resolved quickly. 

In this period of COVID-19 when the pharmaceutical industry has become a mainstay of the world’s survival, the present chaos at Ghana’s ports are the least we expected to experience in our effort to deliver to the needs of the nation. 

We, therefore, wish to appeal to government to resolve the recent challenges that have characterised import clearance at Ghana’s ports. The bottlenecks, we wish to emphasize, have imposed harsh burdens on our members who have had to fall on government support to survive the COVID-19 conditions. 

If the current situation persists, it could erode the benefits of the financial and other forms of cushioning we received from the government to overcome the COVID-19 era challenges.

Source: the press radio