We don't know why we've been sued - Ghana Police

The Ghana Police says it is ready to battle information technology firm, Waltergates [Gh] Limited, in court over the GH¢25 million suit arising out of the Police online recruitment exercise.

The Director of Public Affairs of the Ghana Police Service, DSP Cephas Arthur said although they are unaware of the reasons why the firm has sued them, they are ready to meet them in court should they be served with the suit.

“We don’t know why they are suing us. We had a contract somewhere in 2011 to embark on a project which didn’t materialise but we don’t know if that is the reason or not,” he told Onua FM.

DSP Arthur said the online recruitment exercise wasn’t done by any IT firm but by their own IT personnel in the Police Service, noting “There were challenges in the preparation but we were able to sort it out to get the final work done,” he added.

When asked whether the IT firm was informed of the Service's decision to use its own IT personnel for the development of the online recruitment platform, DSP Arthur declined to answer for fear of contempt of court.

The suit

An Information Technology (IT) firm, Waltergates (Gh) Limited, wants the ongoing recruitment exercise into the Ghana Police Service halted until a GH¢25 million suit against the service has been determined, the Daily Graphic reported.

An application for interlocutory injunction filed on behalf of the company by its lawyer, Mr Godwin Edudzi Tamaklo, will be moved at the Commercial Court in Accra on May 18, 2016.

The applicant specifically wants the court to restrain the Inspector General of Police (IGP) and his agents “from going ahead with the sales of the e-vouchers for the online recruitment exercise as advertised in the various newspapers and the implementation of the online recruitment project.

According to the applicant, the Ghana Police Service breached a contract entered between it and the service for the online recruitment of potential recruits by terminating a contract between it and the service on April 9, 2014.

The applicant claims that in the year 2011, the Ghana Police Service engaged its services to assist it to move the process of recruitment of its personnel from manual means, which was associated with logistical and administrative bottlenecks, to a technology-based process in order to avert the problems militating against the recruitment process of the Ghana Police Service.