Habib Iddrisu, Armah Kofi Buah
The Majority in Parliament has dismissed as untrue the Minority’s claim that the government intends to recruit 11,000 personnel into the security services.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) MPs had accused the government of engaging in irregular recruitment ahead of the 2024 presidential and parliamentary elections.
Led by their Deputy Leader, Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, the NDC MPs said the type of recruitment the government plans to embark upon is fraught with procedural breaches and nepotism.
“It would be recalled that the NDC Minority raised concerns about similar secret recruitment of NPP foot soldiers, including its thugs, into the security services as part of its election-rigging machine for the 2020 general election,” he stated.
Responding to the allegation, First Deputy Majority Whip, Habib Iddrisu, said the Minority had deliberately distorted the facts to cause “political tension.”
“In the first place, the Ministry of Interior is not recruiting 11,000 and something figures as they are putting it out there. It is never true and also, the fact that there is no backlog in terms of the security recruitment.
“What is on notice or what is true is that the Ministry of Interior only seeks for clearance for the security agencies to recruit people, meaning the Ministry of Interior will facilitate through the Ministry of Finance to get commencement for the recruitment,” he explained.
“That is why you will see that when there’s going to be a recruitment into the Police Service the police will do the advertisement. They will do their own screening. They will do their own medical, the process is for them,” he added.
On the issue of backlog, Mr. Habib Iddrisu, who is also the New Patriotic Party (NPP) MP for Tolon, said during the last recruitment over 50,000 people applied to be enlisted, but the security services were unable to absorb them all, thereby creating a backlog.
He also dismissed suggestions that the government intended to manipulate the recruitment processes to favour the party’s parliamentary candidates.
“You (referring to the media) already know that what they’re saying is not true. And this is not the first time that our colleagues from the other side are making this allegation,” he said.
According to him, another claim that the NPP parliamentary candidates have been given 30 slots each has no basis, asserting that mathematically, it does not add up.
“The Interior Minister had dared them before when they made the statement of 30 slots each, that if they know any parliamentary candidates who have 30 slots each, they should mention their names,” he noted.
“I don’t have 30 slots each and that’s 120 for my constituency. And my colleagues who are also parliamentary candidates here with me don’t also have 30 slots each to be given to their constituents,” he added.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House