Mrs Dzifa Aku Attivor, Minister of Transport, on Tuesday commended the Ghana Navy for the capture of eight Nigerian pirates on Saturday at Tema.

This, she said, was an indication that the Ghana Navy had been equipped by the Government and that it was also in total control of the territorial waters of the country.

Mrs Attivor said this during the swearing in of a 13-member reconstituted board of the Ghana Maritime Authority in Accra.

She pledged Government’s readiness to continue to invest in the Navy and the transportation sectors to enable them to perform their functions well.

She advised the new board members to desist from taking over the management of the companies on whose board they served but rather work as a team to realise the objectives of the Authority.

“As a matter of caution, I wish to remind the Board that under the Governance Framework, they are under the Ministry and for that matter report directly to it and under any circumstance deal with other authorities above the Ministry without due consultation,” she said.

She expressed the readiness of the Ministry to create an integrated, cost effective, safe, secured and sustainable transportation system responsible to the need of society, supporting growth and poverty reduction and making Ghana the transportation hub in West Africa.

She urged the boards under the Ministry to re-engineer to be able to steer the direction of the various agencies in the transport sector.

She said the Ghana Maritime Authority was established in 2002 with the responsibility of monitoring, regulating and co-ordinating activities in the industry.

Mrs Attivor appealed to the membership of the board which is made up of team of experts to come out with very innovative funding mechanisms to reduce the financial burden on Government.

She appealed to the State Enterprises Commission to organise seminars and workshops on institutional governance to spell out the roles of the board and management for effective and smooth operations of the agencies.

The reconstituted board is made up of Mr Felix Twumasi Appiah as the Chairman with Mr Peter Azumah, Mr Twumasi Selby, Mr Samuel Quartey, Mr Admiral Biekro, Mr Joseph Sutherland, Mr Richard Anamoo and Alhaji Asuma Banda as members.

The rest of the members are Mr Joseph Agbaka, Mrs Naa Densua Aryeetey, Madam Esther Gyebi Donkor and Captain Hannah Aggrey.

Mr Twumasi Appiah, on behalf of the board members, expressed their appreciation to Government for the trust reposed in them and pledged their readiness to work to improve on the fortunes of the Ghana Maritime Authority.