Immigration Officers Demand Boss' Head

*By Ras Liberty Amewode (The Herald)*

The Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) risks disintegrating along elitist lines following allegations of massive nepotism and victimization against the Director, Elizabeth Adjei.

Some officials who would rather remain anonymous for fear of victimization want President John Mills to set up a committee to investigate the activities of Miss Adjei, and possibly reassign her.

The officials, who claim they are victims of the alleged high-handedness of Miss Adjei, are also calling for an audit into the financial transactions of the service over the six and half years that she has occupied the position.

“How she disbursed our 20% Internally Generated Fund retentions, Gateway Funds, especially Internet Connectivity Contracts, recruitment dealings and the mode of purchasing vehicles could be points of references for the audit”, they claim.

But Miss Adjei has however rebutted the claims of the officials, saying she has nothing to hide. She told The Herald on telephone that she is open to any probe which she said would reveal the truth for all to see.

She said she had been audited many times over with no adverse findings and wondered what the officials were up to in calling for another inquiry.

The officials noted that in a little over six years, staff strength rose from 840 officers and men in 2002, when Miss Adjei took office, to over 4,500 currently and questioned the mode of recruitment into the service when a single advert for the exercise had not been sighted in any medium.

They cited an alleged clandestine manner in which 561 officers were recruited just before the 2008 elections and surreptitiously passed out on February 13, 2009 without the presence of any government official as has been the practice.

The officers referred to a petition presented in 2006 to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), the Auditor General and the Ministry of Interior by the then Internal Auditor, DSI Isaac Amanor to audit Miss Adjei, (Mr. Amanor did not live to pursue the audit, he died after an operation), and urged the aforementioned institutions to intervene immediately to settle what they say is a looming crisis.

They decried the huge expenditure the government makes on the Border Patrol Unit (BPU) which they claim is nothing other than creating an avenue for job for the boys.

“The regular and BPU officers are all performing the same functions and put on the same duty roster. Nothing has changed; what has changed though is that some selected officers from the newly recruited ones are given eight weeks further physical training and awarded a ‘CERTIFICATE IN CONFIDENCE BUILDING AND TEAMWORK’”, the officials said.

They added that, “Due to this arrangement, the immigration service is now divided and polarized with those who have not had the eight weeks training being made to feel inferior”.

According to them, the director has used transfers as a tool to victimize anyone with a dissenting view, adding that too many fine and innocent officers have been victimized through this with the view of cowing them into submission or consigning them to perceived dry and far places to be “forgotten”.