Armed Forces trains Customs officers in counter insurgency

64 Infantry Regiment – the Counter-Terrorism Unit (CTU) of the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF), has successfully trained thirty-eight (38) Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) officers, to form the pioneers of the Customs Counter Terrorism Unit for the revenue institution.

The Customs officers had been through three weeks intensive of training at the Asutsuare Training Camp of GAF’s Special Forces, to be GRA’s CTU, within the Preventive/Enforcement Department, and graduated on Monday, 23rd December, 2019.

The Customs team, which is the second batch which had been trained in counter-insurgency teamwork and confidence building, went through subjects such as weapon training, obstacle crossing, navigation, voice procedure, map reading, identification of IEDs, cordon and search.

Speaking as the Guest of Honour at the ceremony to close the training, Mr Seidu Yakubu – a Deputy Commissioner, Preventive of GRA, highly extolled the empowerment through inter-agency collaboration, such as it is with the 64 Infantry Regiment.

“Fighting terrorism, extremism and other organized crime is no longer a reserve of any one institution, it is a collaborative effort among security institution as shown by your willingness to put your resources and manpower at our disposal to train our men for the maintenance of peace, security and territorial integrity”, Mr Yakubu said of the Special Forces.

Mr Yakubu stressed the importance of training and equipping a very vital national institution like the Preventive/Enforcement Department of the Customs, with the necessary skills in combating transnational cross border crimes, such as terrorism, extremism, jihadist and other emerging security threats.

“The liberalized International Trade has its fair share of the threats. We all know that trade is the economic backbone of every Nation”, the commissioner intimated.

Customs as a mandated frontline Institution is expected to adopt modern and workable tools, to concentrate its control and enforcement activities, to effectively disrupt illicit cross-border trade that poses the highest threat, while they also facilitate legitimate trade that conforms to safety, peace, security and territorial integrity.