''Mad rush'' for Ghana police recruitment

Hundreds of Ghanaian youth besieged police training schools across the country to be recruited into the service.

Four thousand applicants are scheduled for the each day for six days undergoing physical screening exercise.

Some applicants besieged the national police training school as early as 4:00 GMT Monday morning to be screened after being short listed by the recruitment committee

Unlike the previous years, the parade ground was well barricaded to prevent unauthorized persons from entering the inner perimeter.

The whole day exercise begins at 7.00am each day and follows a systematic order in a well-organized environment.

Anyone who failed at any of the stages was shown the exit.

Officials were on hand to continually remind the applicants of the rules.

The applicants go through varying physical body examination, selection and verification of relevant documents.

The mad rush underscored the level of unemployment in the country.

However,the Director of police public affairs directorate, DSP Shilla Abayie Buckman in an interview with Africanews correspondent, Peter Quao Adattor downplays assertion that the huge turn out was due to unemployment rate in the West African nation.

‘‘We have advertised the qualification and you would have to go through a process to be enlisted. And so for us it not about whether there are jobs or not. We are looking Ghanaians as advertised and you would have to go through the procedure to be enlisted’‘,DSP Shilla said.

Commandant of the National police training school, ACP Debora Anderson Campbell, spelt out some of the procedures.

‘‘They would come with the vouchers that are inviting them for so if you are here today, you should have a voucher which state that you should report to this school today for screening. Then we have a voucher which informs the applicant that he or she is qualified for the second stage. Then we expect your certificate, birth certificate and any other relevant document’‘,ACP Deborah said.

She added that ‘‘failure is failure, if you don’t have the standard height for the general recruitment or you have any other thing which don’t meet our body selection, that thing cannot change with time. We have our director general on the ground, am also at the ground. If the teams are not sure of anything, they bring the particular candidate to us for further verification before we endorse whether a person has failed or can be considered’‘.

There is no accurate data on unemployment rate in Ghana but latest Labour Force Survey Report for 2015, suggested more than 1.2 million persons from 15 years and older are estimated to be unemployed, representing the total unemployment rate of 11.9 per cent.

The report estimated bout 714,916 of the figure to be females, and 535,997 for males.