Enlistment into Police Service not cancelled -Interior Minister

The Minister of the Interior, Mr. Cletus Avoka, has indicated that the recruitment process into the Ghana Police Service has not been cancelled, but temporarily suspended, because of the lack of accommodation to house personnel.

According to him, all the Police Training Schools would continue to re-train personnel already in the system, to improve upon their professional effectiveness and competence, whilst it sources for funds to address the accommodation problem confronting the Service.

Mr. Avoka, who is also a Member of Parliament (MP) for Zebilla, was responding to a question on the floor of Parliament, posed by Mr. Yaw Baah, MP for Kumawu, on why the police recruitment exercise for the 2009 calendar year, had been suspended.

He recounted how the Police Administration issued a public statement suspending enlistment into the service for the year 2009.

In line with the existing problem, the police did not want to aggravate an already precarious situation of housing the officers and men of the service by recruiting more personnel, he told the House.

“Madam Speaker, this state of affairs significantly affects performance of personnel, as it lowers their morale and demotivates them,” adding “as a result of these extreme accommodation difficulties, most married policemen, especially the young ones, cannot live with their spouses and families.”

He told the Legislative House that it was the priority concern of the Interior Ministry to take steps to improve the acute accommodation shortfalls, before embarking upon a new recruitment exercise.

Touching on Mr. Robert Sarfo-Mensah's question on the way forward to addressing the accommodation deficit that has bedeviled the Police Service, Fire Service, as well as the Prisons Service, the Interior Minister said his outfit had taken a number of measures to address the situation.

According to him, in spite of the financial challenges confronting the sector, the Police, Fire and Prisons services had rented a number of private houses (Barracks Annexes) for the officers, as a short term measure.

Highlighting on the future plans of his ministry, he said prospective investors had been contracted for possible construction of mass houses nationwide, for per

sonnel of the three Services.
Already, forty-eight new housing units, out of a proposed 128, had been constructed for officers of the Akanful Prisons. The project, according to the Minister, would be replicated in all the ten regions of Ghana.

Addressing a question on the mass transfer of personnel of the Criminal Investigative Department in the Greater Accra Region by Mr. Seth Kwame Acheampong, MP for Mpraeso, Mr. Avoka noted that the directive was purely an administrative decision, which was taken to enhance efficiency in the Criminal Investigations Department.