Kwame Takyi Asuah
“The Comptroller-General is not on contract nor has he reached his retirement age. It is therefore not true that he is fighting hard to cling on to power,” the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) have told Kelvin Taylor as he adds the security agency to the many he has sought to malign in recent times.
In a comprehensive reaction to Kelvin Taylor’s political attacks on GIS Comptroller General Kwame Takyi Asuah from his base outside the borders of the country, the GIS told him that “even the detractors of the Comptroller-General know very well that he is hardworking, disciplined, time-conscious and committed to the cause of making the GIS a formidable security institution.
The GIS reaction is informed by a video in which Kelvin appears to have embarked upon a campaign of image denting with the GIS boss being his target.
“The attention of the Ghana Immigration Service has been drawn to a video making the rounds on social media purportedly from one Kelvin Taylor making wild accusations against the Comptroller-General of Immigration and also about the GIS recruitment process,” the GIS stated.
Had Kelvin crosschecked the hearsay points he put out he would have for instance noticed that under the current Comptroller General the GIS has witnessed phenomenal improvement in many spheres such as staff welfare, training facilities among many others, the GIS stated.
“1. Under Section 3(a) and (b) of Immigration Service Act, 2016, ACT 908, the GIS is mandated to ensure the effective administration and management of migration in the country and also to contribute to national security.
“2. In furtherance of this mandate, the President in June of 2021 launched the Ghana National Security Strategy. In this document the GIS was given a responsibility of coming out with a comprehensive Land National Border Security Strategy to strengthen land border security and to prevent possible terrorist attacks and the entry of members of criminal networks who engage in illegal activities including drug trafficking, arms trafficking, trafficking in persons and illicit goods,” the GIS pointed out.
As a sequel to the foregone, the GIS stated that they alongside other security agencies have been asked to submit “a four-year recruitment and logistical plan with supporting budget for considerations and approval which was subsequently approved by Government.”
Continuing, the statement stressed “it is also a matter of public record that facilities at the Immigration Service Academy and Training School (ISATS) have seen major improvement since the coming into office of the current Comptroller-General, Kwame Asuah Takyi.”
ISATS today can boost of a state-of-the-art 300 sitting capacity lecture theatre, 221 bed hostel and a 3600m2 drill square which can sit about a thousand visitors all at the Academy, they added.
At the Training School, a new 300-bed capacity female dormitory has been put up, an expansion of the GIS Clinic at the Training School has also been completed and in use, the statement went on.
All these have led to increase in GIS recruitment levels from 300 to over 2,000 today, which is in line with our recruitment and logistical plan (2020 – 2024) to recruit about 8,000 more officers between 2020 to 2024 to beef up our border patrol unit and make the borders of Ghana more secured as directed by the President and in line with the GIS Land National Border Security Strategy, Kelvin has been told.
Another critical issue raised in the GIS reaction is the fact that there is no party or tribal affiliation in the recruitment process of the GIS, a verifiable fact the statement added.
“Therefore it is not true that a particular ethnic group was given preferential treatment over others during the last recruitment exercise and the records are there for anyone to cross check,” the statement went on.
“Living in tents is part of our training regime and practical work life. If you go to most of our unapproved points, our officers live in tents to protect the territorial integrity of the country. What we expect from people like Kelvin Taylor is to commend our officers for putting their lives at stake in manning our borders than to say things that will break the morale of officers. What Kelvin Taylor and his likes want, is that we should sit down for the threat of terrorism to hit us in the face and then turn around and accuse the Government and the Immigration Service for not doing anything to protect Ghanaians and our borders.”
By A.R. Gomda