Police seeks corporate support

Accra, July 25, GNA - The Ghana Police Service is embarking on a drive to get corporate bodies to provide additional support to the Service to ensure that it is adequately resourced to make it effective and efficient.

Currently, the Service is inundated with several challenges inhibiting their performance, despite interventions by government over the years to improve their service delivery.

Interior Minister, Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufuor, who is the precursor of the move to resource the Service at a meeting with executives of the Ghana Chamber of Mines (GCM) in Accra on Friday, noted that despite the best efforts of government to ensure that the Police were adequately resourced, the institution still fell short of its requirements. He said there was the need for well-meaning corporate citizens and institutions to offer supplementary support to the Service to enhance their capability and effectiveness.

The meeting was at the request of the Interior Ministry to enable the Service to make a presentation to the Chamber of Mines on the immediate requirements of the police and to solicit the Chamber's support for the cause.

Dr Addo-Kufuor said government, since 2001 had provided the Police Service with considerable resources with the aim of making it more responsive to the security needs of society and the nation, but stressed that policing was a shared responsibility which should be borne by government, communities, businesses and corporate entities. He said that, even though most mining companies spent huge sums of money on private security arrangements, a well-equipped and capable service would ensure peace in the community, and safe environment for prosperous mining operations.

Representatives of the Service told the GCM that crime fighting had been intensified following recent injections of logistics by government.

They said that the statistics indicated that crime was on the decline due to proactive methods adopted by the police. They argued that the current personnel strength of 22,629 needed to be increased to 40,000 to meet the UN's requirement of one police officer to 500 people, noting that this could not be achieved when the Service was in dire need of accommodation, communication equipment and vehicles for some 700 or so police stations and posts nationwide. The representatives said that the immediate requirements of the service were 400 Walkie Talkies, 50 High Frequency Radios for long distance communication, 50 Very High Frequency (VHF) Base Station Radios with about 30 to 50 kilometers range, 10 VHF radio repeaters, Closed Circuit Televisions (CCTV) to monitor flash points in the city, as well as computers.

They also need about a 100 motor bikes, 100 double cabin pick-ups, 500 units of chamber and hall flats for the junior ranks, 200 units of two-bedroom apartment and 40 units of three bedroom flats for senior officers.

They thus appealed to the mining sector to consider their needs and to support the service fulfil its obligation to society and nation. Ms. Joyce Aryee, Chief Executive Officer of the GCM, said there was the need to support the work of the police and that the Chamber had taken note of the concerns of the service and would respond in due course.

The Police Service last week presented the same proposal to the Association of Ghana Industries.