Host of Good Evening Ghana on Metro TV, Paul Adom-Otchere says Ghanaians are unable to trust information from the police concerning the case of the missing Takoradi girls anymore because their communication on the matter so far has been a total disaster.
According to him, the communication processes, the lackadaisical method in tackling the issue as well as the false hope given the families raises a cause for worry.
“The concern is the kinds of things that were told to the people including some of it said by the Minister for Gender. All the hope that was given that these girls might be found. The amount of time it took for the matter to become a public matter through reports from various media houses without the police itself, making it a front-line issue until radio stations went to them and started talking about it.”
Acting Inspector General of Police (IGP), James Oppong Boanuh, confirmed on Monday that the four missing girls from the Western regional capital Takoradi were dead.
The girls Priscilla Blessing Bentum, 21, Priscilla Mantebea Koranchie, 18; Ruth Love Quayson 18, and Ruth Abeka were victims of a kidnapping and murdering syndicate in the Takoradi area, the IGP said.
The police bemoaning the inability of the service to obtain “accurate and actionable intelligence” in “good time”, said the arrest of the alleged kidnappers has “effectively” thwarted the ability of the syndicate to continue their murderous spree.
But Paul Adom-Otchere in a rhetoric manner said, “Why did the Takoradi girls die? What was the police response to it? Does what has happened give us confidence about the Ghana Police?”
Host of Good Evening Ghana analysing the situation on his show posited that Takoradi should be one of the most secured environments in the country due to the number of security-based camps which includes a military and Air Force in the twin city.
He was of the view that the other security forces could have backed the police to create a secure environment.
Emphasizing on communication gaps, Adom-Otchere established that the disaster should never have happened especially in an age where there is technology to make things easy and fast.
To him, some top officials from the police service must step down because “someone must take responsibility” adding that the actions by the police has reduced the confidence the public have in the service.
“At this stage we don’t trust the communication by the police anymore and the police shouldn’t blame us. We cannot trust the communication when they tell us they’ve found the girls; they know where the girls are. We should have at 3, 4,5 top police officers in a civilized situation saying that look we have done a bad job we can’t continue with this responsibility and so we leave up our brief cases here.”
He added, “It’s been disrespectful to the family and it’s been very disrespectful to all Ghanaians. We are not a dormant society. The police must respect the society. This indicates that the police don’t care about the society from the CID boss through the IGP and all the people who had something to say about this, communication was a total disaster and it should never happen again”.
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