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The Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Ghana Airports Company Limited (GACL), Yvonne Nana Afriyie Opare, has blamed the high cost of service charges at the Kotoka International Airport on the lack of critical infrastructure needed to enhance operations at the facility.
She said the GACL had been compelled to charge more for services to mobilise adequate resources to raise the level of infrastructure to an international standard.
She, therefore, suggested the need for the implementation of critical infrastructure “if we want to see Ghana as the aviation hub”.
“Without that infrastructure being in place, we would not be anywhere near our sister airports like Cairo in Egypt, Morocco and South Africa that are way ahead,” she said.
Mrs Opare made the disclosure after the Chairperson of the committee, Abena Osei-Asare, had asked if she had compared Ghana’s airport charges to those of the neighbouring countries, whether it made it more expensive for foreigners to travel to Ghana than other places, and how the company was servicing its loans since it had 100 per cent retention of its internally generated funds.
In response, the GACL CEO said the situation had been necessitated by the lack of certain infrastructure at Ghana’s airport.
On loan servicing, Mrs Opare said the company’s loans were serviced from its non-aeronautical and aeronautical revenue streams, with its aeronautical revenue mainly used to service the Terminal 3 loan.
“Since the Terminal 3 completion, Ghana Airports Company has also never defaulted once on the loan repayment, and so we are in a good position,” she said.The Ranking Member of the committee, Samuel Atta-Mills, raised concerns about the increasing number of weapons and ammunition carried by passengers on aeroplanes.
He cited the Auditor-General’s concern over how passengers were allowed to board flights due to the absence of a policy on passengers carrying weapons.
Mrs Opare responded that currently, there was a directive from the Ghana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA), the regulator of the aerodromes in Ghana.
She explained that the directive stipulated that a person committed an offence if they carried a weapon or ammunition into an aerodrome or onto an aircraft for travel without the required authorisation or prior declaration to the air operator.
“So if you do not have the requisite licence, you are not allowed to travel with the weapon,” she said, pointing out that, subsequent to that directive, there was no law or act in place to bar passengers from carrying their weapons on flights.
“If you have a weapon with you, you have to declare it, and if it is licensed, you are able to travel with it. But if it is not licensed, we confiscate it and send it to the National Investigations Bureau,” she added.
Once such weapons are declared to airport security, they are taken from passengers and secured in containers, allowing the passengers to travel and retrieve them upon their return.
The Chairperson of the committee said in 2023, there were some positives in the performance of the GACL, and therefore urged it to continue to work hard to reduce the company’s expenditure.
She said she advised the company to work within the funding it had as much as possible and use the revenue raised to improve on the infrastructure at the airport.“I hope that the GACL will continue to upgrade its services and make sure you reach the level where everybody will love to come to Ghana because of the services they receive at the Ghana Airport,” she said.
