Police, Minister in Brutal fight over illegal recruitment

Minister of State at the Presidency, Mr. Stephen Amoanor Kwao, has stated that he is responsible for pushing many people into the Ghana Police Service as personnel, but the Police Administration is accusing the minister of peddling serious lies!

The Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Police Service, DSP Cephas Arthur has denied vigorously the assertion made by the Honourable Stephen Amoanor Kwao, the NDC Member of Parliament for Upper Manya Krobo in the Eastern Region to the effect that he has facilitated the employment of over 500 people into the Police and other Security Services.

“In the first place I don't know what he is talking about. I don't know where he is coming from and cannot tell the veracity of the claims he is making. We don't do our recruitments based on ministerial recommendations or on the orders of high political office holders. We go strictly by our laid down criteria and requirement in the recruitment of our personnel so I don't think that is possible,” DSP Cephas Arthur emphasized.

Hon. Stephen Amoanor Kwao who is a minister under the Mahama Presidency stated at a recent ceremony held at Asesewa to present computers, roofing sheets and sewing machines to his constituents that he has assisted five hundred of his constituents into key security and state institutions.

In his bid to tell people what he has been doing for them in the past three and half years as their representative in Ghana's Parliament, Hon. Amoanor Kwao said in his typed speech that “i facilitated the employment of over 500 constituency members into the Community Police, Police Service, Fire Service, Health Extension Workers, Zoomlion, Eco Brigade and the National Youth Employment Programme.”

For years, there have been rumours that leading members of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and government were undermining recruitment processes into key Security Service organization, but this is the first confirmation that indeed the practice is really ongoing.

The Ghana police Service has often denied that it is being forced to recruit people brought forward by politicians, like the DSP is seeking to do in this instance.

Indeed at a point, a commander alleged that such politically chosen police officers were responsible for committing criminal activities as policemen and women.

With election 2012 around the corner, many Ghanaians would be greatly worried by the revelation of Hon. Stephen Amoanor Kwao, who is just one minister but has managed to push an average of about sixty to seventy young men and women into Ghana Police Service alone.

There are dozens of ministers, MPs and top appointees of the ruling party and if even one pushed as many as fifty men and women into the police, it would mean that all the least batch of recruitments are corrupted.