Minority to summon Interior Minister over alleged secret recruitment

The Minority Caucus in Ghana's Parliament on Wednesday, threatened to summon Interior Minister Henry Quartey before the House for what it saw as a secret recruiting into the security services.

This follows an alleged claim by a segment of the media regarding the intended recruitment of 11,000 individuals from a backlog of applications accumulated over the years. 

The Minority said that a press release from the Ghana Police Service stated that there was no backlog in security personnel recruitment.

The Ranking Member of Parliamentary Defence and Interior Committee, James Agalga stated during a news conference that the recruitment process must be clear and equitable.

"Per the Ghana Police press release, they have cleared all applicants from the 2021-2022 recruitment exercise, so any new recruitment requires fresh applications with clear eligibility criteria. 

“The interior minister will have to be hauled to appear before the House and explain to Ghanaians the process of recruitment under his watch is shrouded in so much secrecy,” he said. 

“This is documentary evidence. They are saying that the entire recruitment process for the 2021 to 2022 recruitment process has come to an end. The idea of a backlog is that you start some recruitment process and along the way you are unable to complete the exercise, so you have some outstanding applicants to deal with. That is what the backlog is all about. But the police are saying that they had cleared all the applicants. 

“What that means is that those who were not shortlisted and issued admission letters had not met the eligibility criteria for recruitment. So, they had drawn the curtain for the 2021 to 2022 recruitment exercise. And that is the message we have been seeking to drum home, that there is nothing like a backlog,” he said. 

According to Mr Agalga, this was not the first time the Ministry of Interior’s security services were recruiting.  

“…In the era of the NDC, we did some recruitments, but those recruitments were preceded by advertisements which captured the eligibility criteria. So, all the leader said was, let the minister for the interior play according to the rules of fairness and transparency and cause an advert to be made,” he said.

Mr Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, the Deputy Minority Leader also raised concern at the press conference that the recruiting exercise was being undertaken clandestinely without advertising for eligible applicants, and that the process needed to be fair.

Source : Florence Kyei