Minority to summon Interior Minister over secret security recruitment

The Minority in Parliament has threatened to haul the Interior Minister, Henry Quartey before the House over what it deems as a secret recruitment into the security services.

This follows reports of a planned recruitment of 11,000 personnel from a backlog of applicants over the years.

The Minority contends that a press release from the Ghana Police Service suggests that there is no backlog to be recruited into the security services.

Addressing journalists, the Ranking Member of the Defence and Interior Committee of Parliament, James Agalga said the recruitment process must be transparent and fair.

He argued that the police had cleared all applicants from the 2021-2022 recruitment exercise, hence any new recruitment requires fresh applications with clear eligibility criteria.

Agalga has called for advertisements capturing eligibility criteria, as done during the NDC era, to ensure fairness and transparency.

“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.”

“This is not the first time the security services under the Ministry of the Interior will recruit. 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 leaders said, let the minister for the interior play according to the rules of fairness and transparency and cause an advert to be made.”

“He [Interior Minister] would 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.”