New IGP outlines vision
Paul Tawiah Quaye - IGP THE NEW Inspector General of Police (IGP), Paul Tawiah Quaye, has outlined new strategies to instill discipline, fight crime and bring the Ghana Police Service to world-class standards.
According to him, the Service's total commitment to taking up constitutionally approved as well as internationally accepted democratic principles coupled with standardized practices would “progressively enhance the peace and security of the various communities of our country”.
Mr. Quaye was addressing journalists, senior and junior police officers at the Police Headquarters in Accra yesterday on his maiden strategic policy for the Service during his tenure of office as the Inspector General of Police.
Moreover, he indicated that the successful running of his administration in a short to medium term would be based on some principal objectives, aimed at considerably enhancing the maintenance of law and order along with the protection of life and property in the country.
For him, it has become imperative for the Ghana Police Service, as an institution, to review and update its operational readiness to confront these emerging challenges, emphasizing that though the Service had chalked many successes in terms of its constitutional mandate, there were still bigger difficulties which needed to be addressed.
He revealed also that in the post-independence periods, the Ghana Police Service, under various governmental regimes, had performed and continues to perform its role as defined by the law.
The Chief Constable indicated, “various Police administrations and governments have contributed significantly towards enhancing the administration and operations of the Ghana Police Service in an effort to making it one of the best in the sub-region, if not the world.”
He mentioned undertaking a major internal re-structuring and capacity-building with a view to effectively and efficiently utilizing the limited human resources and logistics of the Service, developing a professionally competent workforce via systematic core and related training, maintaining a comprehensive and reliable database to facilitate crime investigations, policing research and its prosecution functions as some of the key strategic interventions.
He added that through specific targets set for all Police Stations, Districts, Units Divisions and Regions, their performances could be measured periodically. This way, “negative variances reflecting non-performance or under-performance can be immediately identified, evaluated and rectified”.
Others include ensuring a high degree of discipline and accountability within the Ghana Police Service, noting that since “we live in a democratic era, we are therefore required to operate within the parameters of democratic principles of policing, devoid of acts which tend to undermine the important tenets that govern the protection of fundamental human rights and freedoms as enshrined in Chapter 5 of the 1992 Constitution”.
Without playing the ostrich, the Police boss admitted that public perception of the Police was, as he put it, unfortunately very negative.
The image of the Service, he continued, had not been the best in recent times due to gross indiscipline and other forms of unprofessionalism exhibited by “some few bad nuts among us”.
Hence, “in my attempt to urgently salvage the dented image of the Service, rigorous enforcement of equitable discipline will be one of the fundamental pillars of my administration.
Officers and men, who for whatever reasons may run foul of the ethics of the police profession, will be dealt with drastically without favour”.
In addition, he said that they would mobilize both academic and private sector resources to complement government's efforts of helping the police in achieving its constitutional mandate.
Also, he hoped to enhance the existing rapport with other sister security agencies both in the country and beyond.
“Empirical evidence sufficiently shows that modern policing within national territorial boundaries cannot achieve the best of results without the strategic co-operation of other agencies beyond the national borders,” he stated.
However, for effective policing in the country, he pointed out that it would be important if agencies such as the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies worked in tandem towards designing a system of street naming, house numbering among others.
He maintained that the move would make it easy for the police to respond swiftly to reported crimes without any problem.
By Nathaniel Y.Yankson & Linda Tenyah