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Interior Minister, Hon. Ambrose Dery, has fired the claims of the Minority in Parliament suggesting that the Akufo-Addo government is recruiting people secretly into the security agencies.

The Minority in Parliament last Friday in a press briefing alleged that the police, military and the immigration services are training personnel although there was no public advertisement of vacancies.

Minority Leader, Hon. Haruna Iddrisu had explained that he and his members have been informed about the over 1,600 personnel already recruited although public advertisement of vacancies has not been done as stipulated by law.

“The last time the public witnessed a public advert in accordance with the constitution and the public services requirements and regulation was in 2017. So we are asking how come in 2018, 2019 and 2020 there is no official public recruitment advertised giving notice to Ghanaian citizens to prepare themselves for recruitment into these important state institutions and agencies,” he queried.

Reacting to the allegation, the Interior Minister said the claims of the Minority are false as there has not been any recent recruitment but rather the training schools have asked recruits who successfully passed to return after the facilities were shut down temporarily due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

“There is no ongoing recruitment. There was recruitment where the processes were complied with before the Covid-19 pandemic. So what happened at the time was that some of the trainees had reported to school while others were on the way but because of the pandemic the schools were closed down.”

He stressed that that the successful candidates from the initial process ahead of the pandemic are rather being taken through the process of reporting back to the training schools in line with President Akufo-Addo’s directive for some educational institutions to reopen.

“Recently under the auspices of the Presidential taskforce for COvid-19, there has been a roadmap on the reopening of schools starting with final years in the universities. Subsequently, it came to senior high schools and now junior high schools. In that programme, the training schools for the security agencies were involved. So those successful candidates from the recruitment which took place before the pandemic were asked to start reporting,” Hon. Ambrose Dery added.