Petitioning President on police promotions is misconduct - DCOP Ampah Benin
The six disgruntled police officers who petitioned the President over promotions in the Police Service have been described as engaging in misconduct with their action.
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According to the Director of Police Public Affairs, DCOP David Ampah Benin, the officers have breached protocols of the police service and may face sanctions.
“…Sure I believe that their action is misconduct,” DCOP Ampah Benin said in a radio interview on Accra based Starr FM Wednesday morning.
“The IGP, the Police council and the rest of the managers will sit down and decide what we can do about this matter,” he stated.
He said although this was not the first time officers were agitating over promotions, he does not recall the last time any of them petitioned a sitting President.
He said promotions are done to fill vacancies at certain ranks in the police service and that it was not automatic for officers to be promoted once they have stayed at certain ranks for long periods.
For instance he explained that the structure of the service was such that, there were supposed to be 20 Deputy Commissioners of Police (DCOP) at every point in time.
And with a number of Assistant Commissioners of Police (ACP) far in excess of the DCOPs, all of them cannot be promoted unless there were vacancies to fill, Mr Ampah Benin said.
He said for security reasons he would not disclose the number of officers needed at every level as required by the structure but insisted the petition was out of line.
DCOP Ampah Benin said he was yet to come across the petition and could not tell whether the said officers wrote their names.
According to the Ghana News Agency (GNA), with ranks ranging from Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) to Chief Superintendent of Police, the six officers asked the President to prevail on the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr Mohammed Alhassan and the Director General of Administration, Commissioner Rose Atinga Bio to review the process of the recent promotions.
The GNA reported that in the petition signed by the disgruntled personnel to the President, the officers said the promotions had affected analogous senior officer ranks, who were fully and duly qualified since 2013 “and this is affecting morale.”
It said: “The painful aspect of the delay in promotion is the fact that the effective dates for the recently released promotions were not back-dated.
“We the deprived officers who have been denied our promotions are very surprised at the reasons assigned by the police administration’s failure to promote us. The police administration said there are no vacancies to promote officers to their next ranks.”
The petition said the affected members find it difficult to accept an explanation by the police administration that attending the Command and Staff College is not a pre-requisite for promotion.
“Why were the ASPs who have qualified for promotion since 2013 not even been considered during the recent promotions?” The petitioners asked.
The members appealed to the President “to intercede and release our promotions especially those of us on the ranks of Assistant Superintendent of Police to Chief Superintendent of Police”.