The National Democratic Congress Minority Caucus in Parliament Wednesday threatened to bring Mr Henry Quartey, the Interior Minister before the House over what it considered to be a secret recruitment into the security services.

This comes after an alleged report by a section of the media about a planned recruitment of 11,000 personnel from a backlog of applicants over the years.

The Minority claimed that a press release from the Ghana Police Service indicated that there was no backlog for security personnel recruitment.

Mr James Agalga, the Ranking Member of Parliament’s Defence and Interior Committee, told the Parliamentary Press Corps during a press conference that the recruitment process must be transparent and fair.

‘Per the Ghana Police press release, they have cleared all applicants from the 2021-2022 recruitment exercise, so any new recruitment requires fresh applications with clear eligibility criteria.

‘The interior minister will have to be hauled to appear before the House and explain to Ghana
ians the process of recruitment under his watch is shrouded in so much secrecy,’ he said.

‘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,’ he said.

According to Mr Agalga, this was not the first time the Ministry of Interior’s security services were recruiting.

‘…In the era of the NDC, we did some recruitments, but those recrui
tments were preceded by advertisements which captured the eligibility criteria. So, all the leader said was, let the minister for the interior play according to the rules of fairness and transparency and cause an advert to be made,’ he said.

At the press conference, Mr Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, the Deputy Minority Leader, expressed concerns that the recruitment exercise was being conducted clandestinely without advertising for qualified applicants to apply, and that there was a need for fairness in the process.

Source: Ghana News Agency