National Fire Service Personnel Threatens elections

PERSONNEL of the Ghana National Fire Service have threatened to pull out from the up-coming presidential run-off on December 28, because allowances of those of them on duty at polling stations at the last elections had been reduced drastically.

They have therefore asked the Chief Fire Officer (CFO), Felix K. Ferkah and his Deputy Chief Fire Officer (DCFO) William Mensah to refund allowances due them in order to avert the likelihood of them pulling out.

The unhappy personnel maintained that unless their elections monitoring allowances are paid to them, they would not embark of any elections monitoring and will not man any polling stations either.

Narrating their grievances to this reporter, the affected GNFS personnel claimed that after travelling to villages in remote parts of the country they returned to Accra without the allowances which were supposed to have been given to them where they did the elections monitoring.

They alleged that in a pre-departure durbar with Mr. Mensah, he said that they would be given some money by the Electoral Commission (EC) in their respective deployment areas. It was therefore surprising that they had to come to Accra without receiving those allowances.

The fire personnel claimed that they were only given GH C40 with the hope of receiving additional GH C50 from the EC which has not yet been paid and there is no indication that it will be paid..

According to them, their counterparts from the Ghana Police Service (GPS) were given GH C70 and enough ration from their outfit.

Before the December 7 polls the National Security Council made provisions for the payment of some monies to security personnel whilst the EC was supposed to top up.

In all, GH C100 was supposed to be given to the fire service personnel but management allegedly reduced the amount to only GH C40 for those who were deployed to the regions whereas those who remained in Accra received GH C20.

The aggrieved personnel argued that constitutionally, the GPS has the mandate to provide security during elections, and that what the other security services such as CEPS, Ghana Immigration Service, GNFS and the Army did on the last polls was to augment the strength of the Police because the polling stations were more than the police could cope with.

There are indications from the GNFS that during Ghana’s 50th anniversary celebration parade, a similar issue occurred where fire service personnel were paid a paltry GH C13 instead of GH C30.

“When the issue was raised, Mr. Ferkah said ‘ma fa a ma fa’, meaning if I have taken your money, I have taken it. After all, nobody can do anything to me”, a source alleged.

The source said it was time a radical measure was taken against management of the Service to address this debilitating issue.