Ghana’s government has announced major measures to deal with the surge in armed robbery cases which have created fear among citizens.
In many of the incidences, residents in parts of the country especially the capital city, Accra were killed and robbed off their property, with the police service struggling to contain the situation.
The Vice President of Ghana, Mahamadu Bawumia held a crisis meeting with top security officials on Thursday and issued out urgent measures to stem the tide.
As part of that plan, the government has said that:
- There will be heavy military and police presence in major cities across the country starting from [Thursday, March, 1].
- There will be surgical operations in certain areas of the countries based on intelligence to flush out criminals and suspected criminals.
- That the Ministry of Energy has been directed to accelerate the pace of its cities and communities lighting programme in order to light up our cities and communities in especially crime-prone areas.
- There will be enhanced surveillance on financial institutions, forex bureaus and money vending points across our cities.
- That all financial institutions take steps to install CCTV cameras on their premises.
- That the Government will roll out a programme to link all these CCTV cameras to a national operation command centre.
- The security personnel will crack down on citizens using mounted sirens on vehicles illegally.
The opposition MPs have however said that the surge in criminal activities could be as a result of vigilante groups whose activities haven’t been dealt with properly by the government.
A former deputy Defence and Interior, James Agalga said “We have alluded to the fact that some members of the vigilante groups have been trained at Asutsuare. We have the facts. Mercenaries who were brought into this country in the run-up of the 2016 elections came back into this country and took part in the training of some of those elements.”
“We are saying that when you train people in that manner and you don’t engage them actively, what do you expect? There is a correlation and we are not running away from that fact,” Mr. Agalga added.
— Jerry John Rawlings (@officeofJJR) March 1, 2018
Former President of Ghana, Jerry John Rawlings however wrote on twitter that he hoped the robbery cases were not politically motivated.
The country’s lawmakers are now planning to haul the security chiefs in Ghana before parliament to question them.
Source: Africafeeds.com
