General News of Tuesday, 15 June 2021
Source: www.ghanaweb.live
2021-06-15Banks bullion vans could pass for bread delivery vehicles - Fmr. Police Commander
Armed robbers shot to death, a police officer during a robbery incident involving a bullion van
• Former FPU Commander says Banks bullion vans do not meet security requirements
• He also called out the police for assigning just one officer to escort the bullion van
• Armed robbers shot to death, a police officer during a robbery incident involving a bullion van at James Town yesterday
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Read full articleformer Commander of the Formed Police Units, (FPU), Naa Hamza Yakubu has equated the bullion vans used by banks to bread delivery cars.
According to him, those cars do not meet the specifications required to qualify as a bullion van to cart currencies.
He, therefore, called for immediate withdrawal of the so-called bullion vans.
“The vans can only pass for bread delivery because they don’t meet even one inch of the specifications that are required to qualify a vehicle as a bullion van. They don’t meet even one percent and then you put a poor police officer on board and the police administration is looking on aloof’.
He further said the police have also failed to secure the safety of the police officers escorting the vehicles. “They failed fundamentally to secure the personality of the people. They cannot give bulletproof vest? And from the benefit of hindsight provide them with ballistic helmet.” The former FPU commander also questioned why there was only one officer guarding escorting a bullion van.
“In escorting a bullion van, it is also unheard of to allow one single police officer to undertake such exercise. The least you can do is to put them in pairs, at least in pairs of four, six or eight depending on the magnitude of the financial institution; instead, you allow a poor police officer to go and face this.”
The Former commander’s comment is coming a day after armed men shot and killed one police officer and a woman at Adedenkpo near Jamestown in Accra. The police have threatened to withdraw their services if banks do not provide fortified armoured vehicles for carting currencies by the close of June 2021 as earlier agreed between them and the [Ghana] Police Service.
