General News of Wednesday, 2 August 2017
Source: Myjoyonline.com
2017-08-02
Interior minister Ambrose Dery
Families of police officers injured or killed in the line of duty can expect to benefit from an insurance scheme being put together by the government.
Interior minister Ambrose Dery revealed this in Parliament where he appeared to answer questions from MPs on the state of security in Ghana.
“We are working on an insurance scheme to cover not just themselves when they are injured but also their dependents… and also when they lose their lives”, he told MPs.
Admitting that police officers are not well protected, the Interior minister also said the government also needs to protect police officers by increasing resource allocation for protective vests and security gagdets.
At least seven police officers were killed in 2015, 11 were killed in 2014. Already two officers, Lance Corporal Robert Kumi Larbi Ackah and Constable Michael Kporyi, have perished in the line of duty on May 28th and June 13, 2017 respectively.
Family of Corporal Robert Ackah got ¢5,000 from the police command in the Northern region.
But some families have not been lucky to get ¢5,000.
The Interior Minister has described as inadequate, a welfare package of 2,000 cedis given to families of killed officers. “I am very concerned about it”, he is reported to have said.
With the ¢50,000 donation to family of lynched Major Maxwell Adam Mahama by President Akufo-Addo, some police officers are raising issues of discrimination against police officers who die in the line of duty.
One of the aggrieved officers wrote “last year, a good number of police officers died in line of duties and much they could do for them is to inscribe their names on a cenotaph at somewhere National Police Training School.”
