Army enlistment exercises being reviewed

Lt Gen. Henry Smith (RTD), the Defence Minister, on Wednesday said the enlistment processes into the Ghana Armed Forces were being reviewed to deal with anomalies detected in the 2008 general recruitment exercise conducted on March 10, 2008. He said the training of the 420 applicants selected during last year's exercise had to be suspended in "good faith in order to preserve the security and safety of the citizens of the state."

The Minister was responding to a question in Parliament on the fate of the 420 potential army recruits whose training had been suspended. He said as soon as the anomalies observed were rectified, a fresh recruitment exercise would be launched and those affected applicants may re-apply.


The Minister said the training of the selected 420 to begin training at Shai Hills in January this year had to be suspended because of persistent complaints by the general public of anomalies in the recruitment exercise.


He said investigations into the matter confirmed that there were serious anomalies.


"For instance, from the 420 selected, only 228 applicants passed through all the stages of recruitment exercise, the remaining 192 were illegally inserted."

"The Military High Command accepted the recommendation to suspend the recruitment of the 420 applicants selected for training," the Minister said.


He said the second reason for the suspensions was that the infrastructure at the army recruitment training school was inadequate and would "end up corrupting our final products." Lt-Gen Smith said recruitment funding would now be used to improve the physical conditions in the school.


Earlier, at a press conference in the morning, the Minority in Parliament demanded that the Energy Minister appeared before Parliament to inform Ghanaians about the build up in the recent petroleum prices following the increases in prices over the weekend. Mr Kofi Adda, NPP MP for Navrongo, flanked by their leaders, said: "..after describing the NPP government as insensitive and promising to reduce petroleum prices so as to relieve the cost of living, President Mills after securing election and becoming President on the back of those promise, within six months, has actually increased prices of petroleum by 30 per cent. Is President Mills a man to be trusted?"