Recruitment scam victim: 'I paid ¢5,000 with the promise to be recruited from NDC stronghold'

A victim of the recent police recruitment fraud says in addition to paying a whopping sum to be given a non-existent job in the police administration she was also lured into believing that the  governing National Democratic Congress was offering jobs to people in its stronghold.

Named only as Farida, the victim told Joy FM's Super Morning Show host Kojo Yankson she paid an amount of GH¢5,000 to one Aisha Asumda, a sheabutter dealer and  the lady at the centre of the recruitment scandal that hit the country.

She said she was given a police admission letter bearing the signature of the Commissioner of Police Patrick Timbillah and told to report to training in Accra.

From Bolga in the Upper East Region five other people came to join her to the Accra Police Training School only to realise she had been scammed.

Together with 50 other such victims, Farida said they were locked up in a class room when they turned up only to be told the letters in their possession were fake.

According to her, one of the police officers told them that because COP Timbillah had his signature on the fake letters he would rather Timbillah himself came to speak to them.

She said Timbillah came, peeped through the classroom and went back only for another police man to come and tell them that COP Timbillah had travelled.

How it started
Farida said she was introduced to Aisha Asumda by an uncle. A sheabutter seller but with a reputation of  recruiting people into the Police service, she said Asumda asked her to pay an amount of GH¢5,000 to facilitate her recruitment.

She explained the amount was not a bribe, but something to facilitate her training regime when she is recruited because government was broke and could not raise the amount for their training.

She had been staying in Accra for eight years without a job. A fashion designer without a shop she said the offer from Aisha looked quite lucrative.

She was left with two options- either to pay the bribe or to use her body to survive. The former was the better option, she opined.

With the little savings she made out of the little sewing business she was doing she was able raise GH¢2,000. The remaining GH¢3,000 was raised by her family back at home in Bolga who had to sell a parcel of land.

She went through medicals at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital before proceeding to the Training school.

Now all that had gone into the drain, she said. "It hurts me a lot," she pointed out.

She said when the issue broke she met Aisha at the Police Headquarters when she was doing her own follow up.

When she confronted her, she reported Aisha as saying that the money she took from her was given to the top members in the police hierarchy and that if it was a scam at all she was not to blame.

Farida said she has lost interest in becoming a police officer.