There are no secret recruitments - Ambrose Dery

Ambrose Dery, Minister of the Interior has refuted allegations that government was recruiting people into some security agencies.

Mr Dery, who briefed the media in Accra on the sidelines of an on-going police CID conference reacted to Mr James Agalga’s allegation at a news conference that, the government was secretly recruiting its cronies into the Police, Fire, Immigration and Prison Services.

“There is no truth in the fact that there is any secret recruitment anywhere. What is happening right now at the prisons Borstal is that apart from the Police that had the hospital, the other agencies depend on the health facility at the Immigration Service for medical examination." So they are implementing their strategies to cope with the huge numbers, there are no secret recruitment.

He said in 2018, all the security services; Ghana Immigration Service, Ghana National Fire Service and Ghana Prisons Service, Ghana Police Service advertised for recruitment and the outcome was massive.

He said a lot of people applied and there was public outcry on two issues that they had to pay GHC50 and that the people over 85,000 relating to vacancies declared available.

“So for the police has space for 2,000, so based on the public outcry and advice received, government directed the police service to take additional 2,000 from the same group of applicants who applied earlier on. Across the other agencies such as Ghana National Fire Service, 1,000 were recruited, they petitioned the Ministry and it decided that subsequent grants would cover them."

"The recruitments were unprecedented across board and to date, police had not finished dealing with the 4,000 and the other agencies too are still struggling.For instance, Fire Service had to use the Secondary School in Ada three months for training."

“The President is not conducting any secret recruitment,” he stated. He Mr Agalga should invite him to answer any question and he would answer that since he is a member of the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Defence. Mr Agalga alleged that as the recruitment of personnel into the Police Service in 2018 was characterized by outright nepotism and procedural breaches, the recruitment the on-going exercise fraudulent asx there was no advertisement for recruitment into the Ghana Police Service.