Convener of the OneGhana Movement and Trustee of the Ghana Coalition Against Galamsey, Senyo Hosi, has warned that the massive number of applicants seeking recruitment into Ghana’s security services could pose a national security risk.

Speaking on JoyNews’ Newsfile programme on Saturday, March 14, he said the situation exposes deep failures within the country’s labour and employment systems.

Mr Hosi argued that the wide gap between the number of applicants and the limited recruitment slots should be a matter of serious national concern.

“When you have hundreds of thousands of people chasing a few security service jobs, it should worry us as a nation,” he said, noting that it reflects the desperation of young people searching for stable employment opportunities.

His comments follow the Minister for the Interior, Muntaka Mohammed-Mubarak, announcing that only 5,000 applicants would be recruited into the various security services in the first phase of the ongoing nationwide recruitment exercise.

The minister explained that although a large number of candidates had progressed through the selection stages, the government could only absorb a limited number due to fiscal constraints.

According to him, after the documentation stage, fewer than 30,000 applicants were disqualified, leaving roughly 400,000 candidates eligible to proceed to the next stages of the process.

Mr Hosi stressed that the scale of interest in the security services should prompt policymakers to address broader structural issues in the economy, particularly the urgent need to expand job creation across other sectors to absorb the growing youth population.