Rev. John Ntim Fordjour
The Minority in Parliament has accused the government of orchestrating what it describes as a massive recruitment scam in the ongoing enlistment exercise into the country’s security services, alleging that hundreds of thousands of unemployed youth have been misled and financially exploited.
According to the Ranking Member on the Defence and Interior Committee of Parliament, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour, the recruitment process has raised serious concerns about transparency, fairness and integrity, insisting that the entire exercise appears to be designed to extract money from desperate job seekers rather than offer genuine employment opportunities.
Addressing a press conference in Parliament yesterday, Rev. Ntim Fordjour said more than 506,000 young Ghanaians responded to the government’s call to apply for positions in the Ghana Police Service, Ghana Immigration Service, Ghana National Fire Service and the Ghana Prisons Service.
However, he said the Minister for the Interior recently disclosed that only 5,000 applicants would eventually be recruited from the large pool.
He argued that the revelation had left hundreds of thousands of hopeful applicants devastated after they had invested time, money and effort in the recruitment process.
“The structure of this recruitment exercise is akin to a Ponzi scheme, criminally crafted to defraud over half a million unemployed Ghanaian youth,” Rev. Ntim Fordjour stated, adding that the situation had created widespread frustration among applicants who believed they were being offered a genuine opportunity to serve the nation.
He questioned why the government would invite more than half a million applications when it knew that only a small fraction of the applicants would be employed.
The Minority further criticised the decision to raise the recruitment age limit from 25 to 35 years, arguing that the move only encouraged more unemployed youth to apply under the impression that the government had adequate capacity and financial clearance to recruit them.
Rev. Ntim Fordjour also raised concerns about the financial implications of the recruitment process, noting that each applicant paid GH¢220 for an application form. With over 506,000 applicants, he said the exercise generated more than GH¢111 million.
According to him, the internet-based aptitude test conducted as part of the process was plagued by technical difficulties, including connectivity problems and system disruptions that caused many applicants to be disqualified.
“These young men and women encountered serious technological challenges during the aptitude tests and were timed out without even completing the process,” he said, adding that the outcome could not be described as a merit-based recruitment system.
Rev. Ntim Fordjour said the Minority Caucus could not remain silent while what he described as the exploitation of unemployed youth continued.
He therefore called for an independent bipartisan parliamentary probe into the entire recruitment exercise to ensure transparency and accountability.
The Minority is also demanding that the government refund the GH¢220 application fee to all applicants who were disqualified through what it described as a flawed recruitment process.
Rev. Ntim Fordjour warned that the growing frustration among the large number of unsuccessful applicants could pose a national security concern if the issue is not addressed promptly.
“We cannot sit down while hundreds of thousands of Ghanaian youth are treated with such disregard,” he said, stressing that the integrity of the country’s recruitment processes must never be compromised.
By Ernest Kofi Adu, Parliament House