Head of Human Security at the National Security Secretariat, Brigadier General Nunoo Mensah (Retired), has urged government to be bold and cut employment in security agencies.
This he says will enable it deal with inadequate funding to the agencies and properly cater for their needs.
Speaking to Joy News at a book launch in Accra, General Nunoo-Mensah said, “government must be bold enough to take certain bold decisions.”
He said even though there is a lot of political pressure on government to employ people, it should be able to resist these pressures and employ people it can manage properly.
“There is a lot of political pressure on government to employ people but if you cannot pay the people, equip and train them, then you have to resist the pressure.”
General Nunoo-Mensah advised that government take a look at policies on recruitment to ensure that the number of security personnel employed is what the country indeed needs and until that is done, it will continue to struggle to provide for security agencies.
Meanwhile, a member of the Defence and Interior Committee of parliament, Seth Kwame Acheampong, has warned that the Police and Prison Services may be handicapped in carrying out their duties in 2015 due to low budgetary support.
According to him, the Police and the Fire services alone have a debt of over Ghc10 million to clear with their fuel suppliers, with some threatening to cut supply.
He said the debts, if not settled, will be detrimental to the security of the nation and that “armed robbers will be killing us and fire will burn buildings because we don’t have money to support the services.”
An Ghc800,000 debt for the Prisons Service and the Fire Service, according to him, is yet to be settled.
Mr. Acheampong was contributing to a motion to approve an amount of almost Ghc1.2 billion allocated to the Interior Ministry in the 2015 budget in parliament.
But deputy Interior Minister, James Agalga, says despite the challenges facing the security agencies, they are resolute in their duties to the nation.
