Aflao (Volta Region) -- Personnel at the Aflao Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) are gripped with fear for the past three weeks following a curse pronounced on seven officers by a fetish priestess when they seized smuggled goods in a house near a shrine at Nogokpo.

The fetish priestess was said to have gone into frenzy, recited some incantations, sprinkled some liquid on the CEPS personnel and said they would all die within one week for breaking a taboo barring people from entering her compound in footwear.

Even though the seven days had passed and the personnel are alive the CEPS command had petitioned headquarters to intervene to address the issue. In all 346 pieces of imitation wax prints were retrieved from five rooms.

A source close to the Task Force told the Ghana News Agency that they had a hint that some smuggled goods were being kept in a house near the Kadza shrine at Nogokpo, about 18 kilometres from Aflao.

At midnight on November 5, seven CEPS personnel arrived at the Nogokpo and entered the house. When the occupants refused to open the doors the officers forced them open and retrieved the items.

''An old woman in the first room, the priestess, then pronounced the curse.'' When contacted Kow Amissah-Koomson, Assistant Commissioner of CEPS, confirmed the story and said it showed the dangers and threats CEPS personnel were exposed to daily in their efforts to check smuggling. "It is clear that smugglers are resorting to shrines for protection against arrest as those areas remain no go places," he said.