Two thousand applicants qualify for 2nd phase of police enlistment

Two thousand general recruit applicants for enlistment into the Ghana Police Service have qualified for the next stage of the recruitment exercise, which involves medical screening at the Police Hospital.

The applicants have been categorised into groups, each numbering 250, and they have been given dates to take their turns for the medical screening until they are all covered.

Qualified recruits

Briefing the Daily Graphic on the second phase of the enlistment exercise in Accra yesterday, the Public Affairs Director at the Police Headquarters, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Mrs Sheilla Kessie Abayie-Buckman, said of the number who applied for enlistment, the first 2,000 to qualify were sent letters inviting them to the next stage of the process.

She added that other professionals and graduates who applied and were on the waiting list would be contacted at the appropriate time to proceed with their part of the recruitment process.

Mrs Abayie-Buckman said the applicants so invited were currently undergoing tests in chest X-Ray, eye examination, blood grouping, physical  examination, among others, to establish their general health status ahead of deployment to the various training schools.

Recruitment projection

The government had projected to recruit 5,000 people into the Police Service to increase the police-citizen ratio, but that is yet to be realised, as the Police Administration is yet to receive clearance to enlist more people into the service.

Mrs Abayie-Buckman said the applicants who would come out successful after the medical screening would be contacted and deployed to undergo a six-month compulsory training at the various police training schools across the country.

She urged potential applicants to be wary of fraudsters who used dubious means to extort money from applicants, with the promise of facilitating their enlistment into the service.

She cautioned particularly the current applicants not to part with money to any individual who would approach them in any way connected with the recruitment process.

She served a strong notice to the public about the Police Administration’s resolve to arrest persons caught in any acts of fraud.

Recall

The Interior Minister, Mr Ambrose Dery, declared in 2017 that about 8,000 people were expected to be recruited into the  Police Service by the end of that year to beef up its human resource capacity.

He said at the time that the government was working in partnership with the service to ensure that more women were recruited, in a bid to correct the male-female imbalance in the service.

According to him, the new recruitment policy was only one of many interventions the government intended to roll out the recruitment drive.

He made that known when he interacted with the media at the first ever National Police Command Conference in Kumasi in June 2017.

The minister reiterated the statement when he was summoned, together with the Defence Minister, Mr Dominic Nitiwul, before the Parliamentary Select Committee on Defence and Interior early this year to spell out the government’s plan to arrest the high armed robbery situation at the time.