36th Cadet Officer's course opens

Accra, July 15, GNA- Nana Stephen Owusu-Nsiah, Inspector General of Police (IGP), on Tuesday called on individuals and organisations to assist the Ghana Police College in areas of training and logistics to improve the standard of officers to meet international standards of policing.

He said it was the hope of the Police College to continue to train officers to cope favourably with challenges of modern policing and also meet modern trends of law enforcement in the country.

Nana Owusu-Nsiah, who was speaking at the opening of the 26th Cadet Officers Course, said with the increasing sophistication in criminal activities, there was the need to bring the performance of personnel to levels that could cope with modern trends.

About 80 Police personnel drawn from all the Service's Districts and Divisional Units in the country are attending the six-month course. The personnel would be taken through both theoretical and practical methods of policing as well as some computer training to make them computer literate and be commissioned as full national Police Cadets and promoted at the end of the course.

Nana Owusu-Nsaih said being computer literate would help them to communicate effectively with other law enforcing agencies worldwide and help to broaden their scope in peacekeeping.

He said the College needed funding to equip the computer laboratory, library, install audio visual aids, provide a standby generator and also improve accommodation for cadet officers. "The Ghana Police Service need professionally, technically and academically trained officers to effectively and competently perform any assigned roles for the nation and these facilities would help produce such quality personnel to handle law enforcement in the country and elsewhere", he said.

He urged officers to be disciplined and serious since "no automatic wholesale promotion is in place; your commissioning would be based on merit".

The IGP further cautioned that any cadet officer, who puts up a mediocre performance, would be withdrawn from the course. Ms Gifty Anin-Botwe, Deputy Commissioner of Police and Commandant of the Ghana Police College, urged personnel to exhibit a high sense of diligence, loyalty, self-application and integrity as well as the moral courage to defend views.

She said the curriculum of the College had been designed to teach them "the role a Police Officer in a developing nation is expected to play". She said the College would submit an interim report on the general performance of personnel at the end of the first phase, after which a final report would be submitted at the end of the course.