Information gathered by the Daily Searchlight newspaper indicates that the Ghana police Service has been hit by fuel shortage for the past three months. The situation started accumulating since the beginning of the year, making their operations extremely difficult; the Daily Searchlight has learnt.
The situation at the moment has become so compounding that the police are finding it difficult to go on their usual highway patrols and are limited to certain distances o these highways.
“Imagine patrolling the Accra-Cape Coast road and you are given only 22 litres worth of fuel, or about four gallons. How far can you go and how effective can the police work under such circumstance?”, a police officer lamented.
Some police officers who shared their frustration under the current situation on the basis of anonymity were quick to admit the situation has been running since the inception of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government in 2009. They stated that the service is faced with the same problem year on year but nothing significant has been done to arrest the situation.
“It happens every year since 200 but it’s as if there is nobody in charge to handle the situation for us. This thing is becoming so embarrassing and frustrating to the work we do. The faster something is done about it, the better it would be for us all,” an officer retorted.
The situation has deteriorated to the extent that police officers are forced to buy fuel with their moneys when they travel. They said despite the fact that there is no frequent flow of fuel at the police pumps; there is still no money readily available to purchase some on the market.
The source stated that alarms of the Ghana police Service has been severely restricted and hampered by the situation, and so far, all operational command is unable to live up to the expectation of the management and the public.
“It was not like that in the past. We were on the move almost every week to check on our officers who breach the law because fuel was readily available. The situation is entirely different as we speak and it’s like nobody cares,” a Police Officer said angrily.