The Minority in Parliament has strongly criticised the centralisation of recruitment into Ghana’s security services, describing the process as flawed and demanding refunds for hundreds of thousands of applicants who paid fees during the exercise.

This comes after the Minister for the Interior, Muntaka Mohammed-Mubarak, revealed that although about 105,000 young people have successfully qualified for the medical stage of the ongoing recruitment into Ghana’s security services, only 5,000 positions are currently available.

According to the ranking member on Parliament's Defence and Interior Committee, Rev John Ntim Fordjour, the Ministry for the Interior improperly took over the recruitment process for all security agencies instead of allowing the individual services to handle their own enlistment under ministerial oversight.

In an interview on Joy FM's Top Story on Wednesday, March 11, he argued that agencies such as the Ghana Police Service, Ghana Immigration Service, Ghana National Fire Service, and the Ghana Prisons Service should have conducted their own recruitment exercises.

“Instead of allowing the security services to undertake their own recruitment while the ministry exercises oversight, the Interior Minister took it upon himself and centralised the whole process. The security heads don’t have any say. The IGP was not involved, the Chief Fire Officer was not involved, and the Comptroller-General of Immigration was not involved. They are all watching the minister explain the process,” he stated.

The Assin South MP argued that the centralisation has now created a major controversy following the large number of applicants who participated in the exercise.

He claimed that more than 500,000 applicants paid GH¢200 each, even though there were only about 5,000 available positions across the security services.

“When you know you have space for only 5,000 people, why take money from over 500,000 applicants? That in itself is fraudulent."

The Minority, therefore, demanded that the government refund the application fees collected from the applicants.

The Minority insisted that accountability must be ensured to restore public confidence in recruitment into the security sector.

“We are demanding that they immediately refund the monies to the over 500,000 applicants. If they can select the 5,000 recruits, they can take the recruitment fees from those who are eventually chosen. We are demanding justice for the 500,000 youth who have been scammed under the pretext of giving them jobs in the security services.”