Ambrose Dery, Minister Of Interior and Kwame Asuah Takyi, Controller General of the Ghana Immigration Service
The Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) has parried allegations that it is fleecing monies from applicants who responded to its recruitment advertisements.
The security agency explained that it’s following due process and has done nothing untoward in the ongoing exercise to select qualified Ghanaians desirous of taking a career in the GIS.
According to a release on the subject, “The Ministry of Finance late last year gave clearance to the GIS to recruit 500 eligible Ghanaians into the Service.”
This, according to the GIS, was followed by the setting up of a committee to work out modalities for the recruitment process.
“Upon the placement of advertisements in the dailies about the recruitment exercise the GCB Bank Limited was contracted to be the sales point for the sale of e-vouchers across all its branches nationwide,” the GIS pointed out.
While the sale of application forms is not new, GIS explained that this has been the practice in previous recruitment exercises since 2012.
The cost of this year’s application e-voucher, the release went on “was reduced from GH¢100.00 to GH¢50.00 as compared to the previous recruitment exercise in 2016 upon the directive of government to all security agencies under the Ministry of the Interior. Trybnet, a software developer, was contracted to design an e-recruitment system that will help the Service conduct a very free, transparent and fair exercise.’
To ensure integrity and fairness, the Business School of the University of Ghana, was contracted to set questions for the aptitude test so that each eligible Ghanaian will have an equal and fair chance of applying to join the GIS and in doing so, select the best among the pool of eligible applicants, the GIS said.
At the end of the sales, a total of 83,539 vouchers had been sold out of which a total of 47,477 applicants qualified, the GIS disclosed, adding that “it is instructive to note that the cost of the e-voucher was to cater for the services of the GCB Bank Limited, the software developer and other administrative activities. The other charges were for the hiring of screening venues, examination halls, ambulances, contracting sanitation companies to clean up both the examination and screening centers, provision of food and water for the screening teams and applicants, among others, across the all the 10 regional screening centers.’
The GIS stated that it is not the intention of the security agency to cash in on the recruitment process as being peddled in a section of the media, adding that “the process of the recruitment is not peculiar to the GIS in fact that is the process used by all the security and educational institutions.”
Best human resource recruitment practices, the GIS said “will allow for a large pool of prospective applicants in a recruitment drive such as ours to select the best in terms of education, experience, physique and other expertise that will be required.”
The GIS explained that the monies collected would be well accounted for and judiciously used.
By A.R. Gomda