Suicide cases in Police Service: Welfare dept must sit up - Richard Kumadoe

Security Expert, Richard Kumadoe, has charged the Welfare Department of the Ghana Police Service to beef up their operations as alleged cases of suicide in the police service have become a worrying trend in the country.

On his part, addressing the welfare of police officers goes beyond providing logistics and other related items to the police.

“With the nature of the job and the pressure of the work, it will require that the welfare department of the police sit up. In the 21st century police, it is not just about providing logistics and housing or uniform. It has to do with providing psychologists and sociologists who will be able to engage these officers to know the individual problems they face”, he told Samuel Eshun on the Happy Morning Show.

Commenting on situations that may trigger suicidal tendencies by police officers, he noted that issues concerning promotion, meagre salary, the education of their children, internal victimization, among other things can drive one to commit suicide.

On 30th January 2021, it was reported that a District Police Commander in the Western Region, Superintendent of Police (SP) Cyprian Zenge, allegedly took his own life.

The account has it that the officer committed the suicide act by shooting himself at his Bungalow in Half Assini in the early hours of Saturday, January 30, 2021.

Two days after this incident, another police officer in the Greater Accra Region allegedly committed suicide by shooting himself.

The deceased, Constable Eugene Yelnona worked with the National Protection Unit (NPU).

According to reports, he shot himself in the washroom of the residence of a Togolese opposition leader, Gilcrest Olympio who is resident in Ghana, in the early hours of Monday, February 1, 2021.