IMANI Africa President, Franklin Cudjoe is questioning the competence of the Ghana Police Service following the spate of robbery attacks across the country.
According to him, he doubts if the country has a proper police service since they don’t have the needed equipment and resources to battle head on with robbers.
Commenting on the massive shakeup of some top officials of the Ghana Police Service on his Facebook wall, the President of the policy think tank group said “the Police Service is in such a decrepit state and I am appalled. I do not think we have a proper Police Service. We are supposed to have about 52,000 Police personnel but as we speak we have about 38,000 and this year, they will only recruit 4,000”.
Mr. Cudjoe believes securing the welfare of the police by providing them with modern guns and a good place to lay their heads will easily help in the fight against crime.
“We may need helis but poor policeman needs to be well equipped with guns, modern guns, not World War 2 type weapons they have now and a place to lay their heads. We do not have to belabour the point that the Police Service has not been treated properly. The welfare of the Police is a serious matter. As we speak only 6,200 of them are properly accommodated out of the 38,000 and so clearly we do not have a service that is befitting to even take care of itself”, he stressed.
Below is the statement he made on his Facebook wall.
I see the Police High Command has shuffled itself without any given reasons- we are left to speculate given the recent spate of hardened armed robbery incidents unknown to the republic in recent years. However, the major problem of the service remains funding.
Last year the government promised almost Ghc160m for the service. Even then the police got just 20% of budgeted amount in 2017. Between 2015-2016, they got far less and not a single Cedi given them for operations during the 2016 elections under the previous government.
Now though, the announced 800m cedis for the police needs to be monitored as the interior minister has started talking and dreaming about buying 3 helicopters out of that money for the police. We may need helis but poor policeman needs to be well equipped with guns, modern guns, not World War 2 type weapons they have now and a place to lay their heads.
The Police Service is in such a decrepit state and I am appalled. I do not think we have a proper Police Service. We are supposed to have about 52,000 Police personnel but as we speak we have about 38,000 and this year, they will only recruit 4,000.
We do not have to belabour the point that the Police Service has not been treated properly. The welfare of the Police is a serious matter. As we speak only 6,200 of them are properly accommodated out of the 38,000 and so clearly we do not have a service that is befitting to even take care of itself.
Franklin Cudjoe, IMANI President