Digitization of police service underway – ACP David Eklu

The Police Administration, as part of its transformation agenda has migrated five police stations from analogue to digital system with the aim of improving transparency in the operations of the service.

The digitization agenda, if found to be satisfactory will be rolled out across the country as part of the operations of the police service very soon. This is according to the Director-General of Public Affairs Directorate of the Ghana Police Service, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) David Eklu.

This means that, if it becomes fully operational across the country, the issue of missing dockets, missing files to under-hand dealings within the service will be a thing of the past.

Speaking to The Ghana Report on Thursday, he explained the migration of the five police stations from the analogue system to the digital one is borne out of the e-policing system that the service is experimenting.

He said, “It is out of the e-policing system that we are experimenting, we are piloting under the transformation agenda. So, what it means is that if a report is made at the police station, the next line of supervisor will be automatically notified and he can monitor the progress and give instructions online, so the manual system of carrying files all along will be eliminated”.

The Police Director for Public Affairs explains the benefits the migration will bring to both the service and members of the public.

“Of course, it will improve transparency, it will also improve supervision and then it will also facilitate speedy handling of cases so that once the report is made, the supervisor automatically knows about that and then he gives instructions.

You see the whole objective is even to link it to the court system so once the case is going for court, you can just with a click of a button, get to know that a case reported by Mr. A is due for court on this day and this is how the case travels. It is transparent and you cannot manipulate anything.”

Touching on improving security awareness in the country, ACP Eklu said the police administration has put in place a number of interventions to enable them engage actively with the public to fight crime collectively.

He said, “We are on 21 tv stations, our regions also do a lot of sensitization directly in the schools especially on kidnapping to reach a lot of schools and also on radio. Last year, we organized the Ghana Police Week nationwide where we did a lot of public engagement on education and sensitization and it is ongoing and even on our Ghana Police website, we have daily security tips and we also do social media campaigns on our facebook and on our police website.”

The challenges confronting the service in its operations, the Director-General of Police Public Affairs said ranges from logistics to inadequate personnel as well as the level of public awareness on crime.

“You see, we have suffered logistics deficit for a very long time, but the current logistics is quite significant because it has actually increased our visibility. Our low numbers is also one of the challenges but fortunately for now, government has given clearance for us to recruit Four thousand (4,000) more personnel; two thousand (2,000) are currently in training,” he disclosed.

ACP Eklu appealed to the citizenry to co-operate with the service as the police administration is bent on repositioning the service to meet the demands of the public.

“What I’m saying is that with the new transformation that is going on, we are repositioning the police to meet the demands of the public. We’re emphasizing on professionalism and then co-operation with the community in solving community crime problems and this we can only succeed if we obtain co-operation from the public,” he remarked.