14 service personnel arrested for forging postings

Fourteen people have been arrested in Accra, for allegedly forging national service appointment letters.

All 14, enrolling for the 2010 national service programme, were arrested for self-posting, contrary to the National Service Act.

They are helping the police in their investigations.

Times own investigations revealed that there is a syndicate that parades the registration centres convincing prospective personnel that they have people working at the National Service Secretariat who can change their postings for them.

The syndicate charges each personnel up to GH¢300 to effect the changes.

The modus operandi of the syndicate is that they approach national service personnel going through registration and tell them they can help them change their places of posting.

The group takes the appointment letters of the personnel and replaces them with forged ones.

Some personnel also effect the change on their own by copying the online appointment letters and then editing them.

Confirming the story, Mr. Ebenezer Edzii, Greater Accra Regional Director of the National Service Scheme, said the forged appointment letters were detected during the verification process.

He explained that all appointment letters were screened for authenticity before they were endorsed and during the process, it was detected that some of the forms had been doctored.

He said the doctored forms lacked the security features of the originals issued by the secretariat.

"Others designed new appointment letters all together bearing new places of posting," he said.

One of those arrested on Wednesday, told the Times that she did not like the place she had been posted to, so she was introduced to a member of the syndicate who charged GH¢300 but after a bargaining, they settled for GH¢150 which she paid up front.

She said the syndicate member took her appointment letter and returned it later with a new posting.

Francis Baah, Head of Documentation and Visa Fraud Unit of the CID, confirmed that some persons had been arrested in connection with forging national service appointment letters and said investigations were still on-going.

Self-posting is an offence under the National Service Act 426 which prescribes that national service personnel who post themselves to establishments other than those to which they are officially posted, with or without the connivance of the heads of those establishments, shall be declared self-posters and their national service with the establishment shall not be recognised and the appropriate sanctions shall be applied against them.