Security Service Recruitments: Gov’t must refund all GH¢110 application fees – Ntim Fordjour
The Member of Parliament for Assin South and Ranking Member of Parliament’s Defence and Interior Committee, Rev. John Ntim Fordjour has demanded the immediate suspension of the ongoing security services recruitment exercise and the full refund of all application fees paid by the over 500,000 applicants.
According to him, the ongoing recruitment exercise is the “single biggest recruitment scandal” in Ghana’s history and must be investigated.
Speaking on Joy News’ PM Express on Wednesday, Ntim Fordjour argued that the government has “lured” over 500,000 youth into a “fundamentally flawed and inequitable process,” collected GH¢110 million in application fees, and then designed an aptitude testing system that is not capable of giving majority of applicants a “fair shot.”
“I’m surprised that some are calling for applause for a minister who has superintended over the biggest security scam this country has ever recorded. When you go and milk GH¢110 million from over 500,000 people with job slots for only 5,000, that is a scam. That is the biggest scam,” he argued.
When pressed to justify his “recruitment scandal” claim, Ntim Fordjour pointed out that the government promoted an internet-based aptitude test supervised by artificial intelligence as a merit-based process.
“Your merit-based system, what is your definition of merit-based? The fact that it must be equitable. Everybody must have the same shot at getting in. So, if you are talking about over 70% of people who, by reason of their location will not get in because they do not have stable internet, how many locations in this country have stable internet?” he pushed.
“You’re saying you’re going to run an aptitude test and you don’t even put people in an environment where internet connectivity is guaranteed. They just threw the link at them, knowing very well that about 70% of locations in this country where those 500,000 people who they milked GH¢110 million from, have problematic internet connectivity. Even the minister’s own ministry cannot guarantee 100%,” he argued.
The Ranking Member also criticized the government’s decision to raise the maximum recruitment age from 25 to 35 years across all services, arguing that this move was politically motivated and directly responsible for “inflating the applicant pool to a level that is not sustainable.”
“There were public posts, some even granted interviews justifying that they were getting calls from their grassroots, from NDC foot soldiers in their constituencies, calling for expanded age limits from 25 for other ranks and 30 for officers, to a blanket 35. We succeeded in blocking it at the military recruitment. Then when it came to the Ministry of Interior recruitment, the minister responded to those calls by expanding the age limit to 35. So, when they responded to that call, the foot soldiers had hope, because now their calls had been answered. And it had nothing to do with merit at that time. It had everything to do with expanding access so that every NDC soldier may get into the security service,” he claimed.
Ntim Fordjour charged the Ministry of Interior to suspend the current exercise, refund all application fees, and leave all recruitments to the various security services.
“They should immediately suspend it and refund everybody’s money,” he said. “Let’s revert to the status quo where the security agencies own their recruitment, provide them with merit-based policy direction, and put in infrastructure that will guarantee every applicant that when they are sitting for the aptitude test, they are afforded uninterrupted 45-minute internet access.”
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