800 additional Police personnel to protect MPs at home — Interior Minister

The Minister for the Interior, Ambrose Dery, has assured Parliament that a number of 800 police will be deployed to the homes of Members of Parliament to provide security both say and night.

This is aside the 200 police personnel that would be deployed to the Parliamentary Protection Unit to serve as bodyguards for Members of Parliament (MPs) from October to the end of 2020.

He said the addition of police personnel is due to the sensitive nature of the job of a parliamentarian in the country and they need to be protected which falls under Article 71.

“When you look at those categories of persons who are provided, first bodyguards, second residential protection by the police for day and night, they fall into that group that we deal with under Article 71.

“We have more security personnel available, so, what we have proposed is that between now and the end of the year, we’re going to provide additional 200 police personnel to be part of the parliamentary protection unit, making it, therefore, attain the status of a divisional police command that will take care of Members of Parliament as bodyguards”.

“But, ideally, to get to where we should get to, subsequently we should have 800 police added so that each member of parliament will also have security at home in the day and night.” He said in parliament

This plan falls under a call for MPs seeking to protect after the gruesome murder of Member of Parliament for Mfantseman Constituency, Ekow Quansah Hayford.

He was shot by some suspected armed robbers on the Abeadze Dominase–Abeadze Duadzi–Mankessim road when returning from a campaign trip on Friday, October 9, 2020, around 1:00 am.

It was reported that despite indicating that he was an MP when he was attacked, the assailants went ahead to shoot him.