Give MPs, Ministers ‘proper’ security – K.B Asante

There is the need for the state to provide adequate security for Members of Parliament (MPs), ministers of state, and other high-ranking state officials, K.B Asante, a retired diplomat, has said.

According to him, the current security arrangement for ministers of state and MPs is not the best.

His comments follow suggestions in certain quarters that the state should take a leaf from last year’s murder of Joseph Boakye Danquah-Adu, then Member of Parliament for Abuakwa North, and provide police protection for Ghana’s lawmakers MPs.

Speaking in an interview with Chief Jerry Forson, host of Ghana Yensom, on Accra100.5FM in connection with the one-year anniversary of the killing of the late MP on Thursday February 9, Mr Asante said: “Security should be improved for all. How do you provide security for MPs in parliament? I think while they are in parliament there is security but when they leave parliament to their homes, do they want security there also?

“It has been suggested they should have one policeman but will that be sufficient? We have had for years certain officials having police escorts but they are mainly ceremonial in that if there is a crisis, there is no way of getting support or they doing something positive.

My own experience is that the police escorts do not really provide security. When I was a minister, I had police escorts. Even in the house I had police, and yet my electric bulbs were stolen.

You need proper security not only for parliamentarians but for our ministers and key personalities who may be attacked when they make certain decisions or they take certain lines of actions, we need to protect such people but that protection should not turn to be ad hoc, it should be properly organised.”