Members of Parliament (MPs) have decried the spate of cybercrime in the country in recent times and called for swift measures to arrest the menace before it gets out of hand.
They maintained that the menace is rising to an alarming level, and warranting an immediate action to halt it. This followed a statement on the canker, raised by the MP for South Tongu, Kobena Mensah Woyome, on the floor of Parliament recently.
Though short and brief in context, the statement attracted wide contributions from members who claimed that they had all fallen victim to this canker.
Describing the statement as short but important, Hon. Woyome noted that in recent times, many Ghanaians mostly the needy and vulnerable, desperately looking for employment, education and other forms of support have fallen victim to the schemes of syndicates of fraudsters who have created fake facebook and social media accounts in the names of public officials especially MPs and other prominent people in the society.
These fraudsters, the MP noted, download profiles, images and other information of MPs and other prominent people in the society to make the page appear credible and believable. This, he noted makes it difficult to tell which of the multiple accounts in the name of MPs is the credible official account.
He pointed out that the worst of it all was that these fraudsters take advantage of the situation, including the use of mobile money transfer system to dupe unsuspecting people of various sums of money.
“I am one person whose profile and images have been used to dupe people, and so are other MPs!” he bemoaned.
Hon. Woyome pointed out further that in the few days he had received several complaints from people who had been duped with account on facebook in his name. He indicated that he had made an official report to the Police about these fraudsters for action to be taken.
He expressed regrets that so far investigation into these cases had been so slow to uncover the person behind these fraudulent acts so that nothing substantive had so far been derived.
“I therefore want to use this opportunity to call on you, Mr. Speaker, to invite the stakeholders in the area of cyber security, internet fraud and the Telecos to take swift actions to address this menace to help protect these vulnerable victims, and also safe guard the image of Parliament, Parliamentarians, Public institutions and prominent citizens”, Hon. Woyome stated.
He was of the firm believe and conviction that if citizens took drastic action as a country, they could reduce, if not eliminate the menace in the country.
Source: S. O. Ankamah