The usual hustle and bustle of commercial activities at the Aflao border were absent when a team from Single African Market visited the place recently due to the long closure of the nation’s busiest land entry point as a result of the resurging coronavirus pandemic.
Transport owners, traders, service providers and residents say the closure of the border has taken the life out of the boisterous and highly commercial border post.
A bus driver admits that people are no longer able to cross over to come and board vehicles leaving the buses sitting idly at the terminals.
“We cross the border to Togo to sell and get our daily bread but now we are suffering. We don’t have established businesses in Aflao so most of the youth go to Togo. Our parents get their food items from Togo and so even the cost of goods has sharply increased because of the closed border,” a resident of the town shares.
“A number of these buses have spent over three weeks here at the border; the business is not going well at all,” a bus attendant adds.
The residents and traders also say the situation has made life unbearable at the hitherto dynamic border town.
“We are tired and stranded; nobody goes or comes, we are not able to make sales and everything has been scattered,” a female petty trader lament.
Single African Market finds that some traders who couldn’t stand the harsh impact of the border closure have resorted to unapproved routes to get their products and goods across to Togo and vice versa.
“With the unapproved routes, there are several places that people can come in to buy what they need and go back but when we don’t pass through the borders, it will not help the people because traders can’t make many sales,” says Kuebunya-Letsu Edem, General Manager of Ando Shipping and Logistics.
To others, governments of the two countries will have to find practical ways of allowing trade to flow through the border whilst securing lives and livelihoods from the virus.“Covid has come to live with us, we will need solutions that will enable us to live with it without shutting our borders, that won’t help us in any way,” another concerned trader suggest.
This assertion was endorsed by the Ghana Institute of Freight Forwarders’ (GIFF) General Manager for Aflao, Abijah Osabutey-Ayor: “We will like that government puts in stringent Covid prevention measures just as it’s doing at our airports” he says.
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