A GNA News Feature by Boakye-Dankwa Boadi
Accra, Dec. 22, GNA - In this time and age when everything is done in accordance with the best practice elsewhere on the globe, Ghanaian security operatives behave as if they came from the Planet Mars. It beats imagination that security details sent out to cover public functions behave as if they are robots that have not been properly programmed. They go out there to show the people that they are ruthless and unyielding to reason.
The first batch of security men that are guilty of this impunity are those around the President. It seems that they have not been trained to appreciate that while it is their responsibility to protect the President, the Ghana News Agency also has the statutory responsibility to report on all the activities of the President.
It is, therefore, unacceptable for these security details to prevent the GNA from performing its statutory functions. A security detail of the President prevented the GNA from taking the photograph of President John Agyekum Kufour when he presided over the African Union Summit in Accra.
This singular indiscretion of the security detail means that if anybody went into the archives of GNA Photo Gallery in the future, he or she would not have a pictorial record that there was once upon a time a President John Agyekum Kufuor of Ghana, who was also the President of the African Union. Needless to say every intellectual knows the value of such records.
If the behaviour of the Presidential Security was reprehensible that of those sent to the New Patriotic Party Congress on December 22 2007 was atrocious. They prevented the GNA vehicle from going to the congress grounds.
Their reason was that the GNA vehicle did not have NPP sticker. When they were told that the National News Agency could not put the symbol of a political party on its vehicles, these details would not budge.
In fact if the GNA had put the NPP symbols on its vehicles, someone, who wanted to create mischief could take a photograph of the vehicles and write a caption: "GNA directed to decorate its vehicles with NPP symbols."
The question then arises whether these security details are given thorough operational instructions before they are sent out. It is suggested that before recruits of the Police; Military; Ghana National Fire Service; National Immigration Service and other security agencies pass out they should be made to interact with top media practitioners for them to appreciate how important it is for them to cooperate with the media in the performance of their duties.
Such interactions are organised by trainers of security personnel in other jurisdictions. In fact some run a full course on: Media - Security Relations. The University of California MIND Institute runs a lecture series on: Security and Media Relations and the California Police run a similar course.
The best practice elsewhere is for the security to operate unobtrusively. But in Ghana they are engaged in what is known in Ghanaian parlance as "eye service" and by so doing leaving so many loopholes to the extent that someone could drive into the President's vehicle instead of the escort vehicle behind the President's car speeding up to crash into the menacing vehicle. The world is moving very fast. It is now a digital world and those still operating on the analogue system are doomed for extinction just as the dinosaurs did. 22 Dec. 07
A GNA News Feature by Boakye-Dankwa Boadi
Accra, Dec. 22, GNA - In this time and age when everything is done in accordance with the best practice elsewhere on the globe, Ghanaian security operatives behave as if they came from the Planet Mars. It beats imagination that security details sent out to cover public functions behave as if they are robots that have not been properly programmed. They go out there to show the people that they are ruthless and unyielding to reason.
The first batch of security men that are guilty of this impunity are those around the President. It seems that they have not been trained to appreciate that while it is their responsibility to protect the President, the Ghana News Agency also has the statutory responsibility to report on all the activities of the President.
It is, therefore, unacceptable for these security details to prevent the GNA from performing its statutory functions. A security detail of the President prevented the GNA from taking the photograph of President John Agyekum Kufour when he presided over the African Union Summit in Accra.
This singular indiscretion of the security detail means that if anybody went into the archives of GNA Photo Gallery in the future, he or she would not have a pictorial record that there was once upon a time a President John Agyekum Kufuor of Ghana, who was also the President of the African Union. Needless to say every intellectual knows the value of such records.
If the behaviour of the Presidential Security was reprehensible that of those sent to the New Patriotic Party Congress on December 22 2007 was atrocious. They prevented the GNA vehicle from going to the congress grounds.
Their reason was that the GNA vehicle did not have NPP sticker. When they were told that the National News Agency could not put the symbol of a political party on its vehicles, these details would not budge.
In fact if the GNA had put the NPP symbols on its vehicles, someone, who wanted to create mischief could take a photograph of the vehicles and write a caption: "GNA directed to decorate its vehicles with NPP symbols."
The question then arises whether these security details are given thorough operational instructions before they are sent out. It is suggested that before recruits of the Police; Military; Ghana National Fire Service; National Immigration Service and other security agencies pass out they should be made to interact with top media practitioners for them to appreciate how important it is for them to cooperate with the media in the performance of their duties.
Such interactions are organised by trainers of security personnel in other jurisdictions. In fact some run a full course on: Media - Security Relations. The University of California MIND Institute runs a lecture series on: Security and Media Relations and the California Police run a similar course.
The best practice elsewhere is for the security to operate unobtrusively. But in Ghana they are engaged in what is known in Ghanaian parlance as "eye service" and by so doing leaving so many loopholes to the extent that someone could drive into the President's vehicle instead of the escort vehicle behind the President's car speeding up to crash into the menacing vehicle. The world is moving very fast. It is now a digital world and those still operating on the analogue system are doomed for extinction just as the dinosaurs did. 22 Dec. 07
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