By Elsie Appiah-Osei, GNA
Accra, March 12, GNA—The New Patriotic Party Minority Caucus in Parliament has condemned the government’s recruitment exercise into the security service, describing it as an alleged “Ponzi scheme” and a “recruitment scam.”
At a press conference in Parliament on Thursday, Reverend John Ntim Fordjour, the Ranking on the Defence and Interior Committee of Parliament, said the exercise had left hundreds of thousands of hopeful applicants devastated and exploited.
He said, “The government’s decision to recruit only 5,000 applicants out of over 506,000 who applied was “akin to a Ponzi scheme, criminally crafted to defraud over 500,000 unemployed innocent Ghanaian youth.”
“If the government intended to recruit only 5,000 personnel, why should the government overpromise and lure over 506,000 unsuspecting young people to go through a costly and emotionally exhausting process?” he asked.
The Minority Caucus has called for an independent bipartisan parliamentary probe into the entire centralized recruitment process and for the government to refund application fees of GH¢220 per application form to all applicants ‘disqualified’ by the questionable recruitment process.
“The government must refund application fees of GH¢220 per application form to all applicants ‘disqualified’ by the questionable recruitment process. These applicants should not be forced to bear the financial consequences of what appears to be a poorly managed exploitative recruitment process,” Rev. Fordjour said.
Only 5,000 out of 400,000 applicants would find places in the security services, Alhaji Mubarak Mohammed Muntaka, the Minister for the Interior, announced on Wednesday.
He said the 5,000 applicants would be recruited into the various security services in the first phase of the ongoing recruitment exercise due to fiscal limitations.
Addressing a press conference in Parliament on Wednesday, Alhaji Muntaka said, “The recruitment process into the Ghana Police Service, the Ghana Prisons Service, the Ghana Immigration Service, and the Ghana National Service involved mainly body selection and documentation.”
“When we finished, those who got disqualified through documentation were less than 30,000, and so it is left with 400,000 who are now ready to go through aptitude tests and then medical exams,” he said.
GNA
Edited by Linda Asante Agyei
