Ghana Police Service
At the time that we incessantly claimed that the Ghana Police Service was afflicted with integrity challenges, a few skeptics doubted our conclusion, not so though the majority of Ghanaians.
With the latest development about how unqualified persons were recruited into the various recruit training centres across the country, a legitimate question about how the breach was perpetrated should be posed. The cat has actually been let out of the bag and we think that when the searchlight is beamed on the other security agencies such as the Ghana Immigration Service and the Prisons Service, including the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Service, similar anomalies would be unearthed.
When the police system, part of the justice administration chain, suffers such a blemish the extent of degeneration of the country can be gauged more easily.
With the academic standards lowered or even non-existent, there is no gainsaying the fact that background checks of recruits are easily thrown to the dogs as bad politicians remotely take over the screening process.
The outcome is the enlistment of potential armed robbers who would not hesitate to waylay bullion vans on the highways, empirical evidence abounding to prove this assertion.
What is the relationship between the discovery by the Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), who appears set to take sweeping measures to clean the dirty stable of the filth it has been enmeshed in for the past years and the recruitment scam which hit the institution a few years ago?
We must doff our hats for the early signs of positive actions which the Acting IGP appears intent on pursuing to rid the Ghana Police Service of the bad baggage it has carried for some time now and much to the detriment of efficient enforcement of the law.
We are tempted to believe that should a probe be instituted into the mess, names would pop up who succumbed to the dictates of reckless politicians to breach the standards of an otherwise disciplined security organization.
Haven’t others passed through the mill in the past few years of the administration of the immediate past Chief Constable who did not meet the academic standards of the system but only dangled the NDC membership card?
Would Superintendent Cephas Arthur, Public Relations Director, keep his intervention to himself because nobody believes him any longer as a spokesperson of the Police Service? Â Following the publication of the story about the scandal, he has characteristically jumped into the fray to state that the figure of those sacked is not 3,000 as being peddled. We wonder which media organization mentioned that figure anyway. It is a bad story, regardless of the statistic, and he better give us a brake and not get on our nerves with an unnecessary intervention which can only raise the adrenalin level of Ghanaians further.
He was part of the negative image of the police because he could not give the appropriate counsel to his superiors when they needed it.
A PR man is not only a spokesperson to his organization, but one who renders productive counsel to his superiors.
It is our position that a probe be initiated into how the anomalies ensued in the recruitment process of the police. They are prepared to pluck the eyes of their compatriots for simply demonstrating against a bad government because after all, the standards were wavered for them to be recruited into the police.
Those who agreed to be accessories for the commitment of the absurdities must be named, shamed and showed the exit for being responsible for the sorry state of the Ghana Police Service today.