Some personnel of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) who have recently been posted have lashed out at the service and accused it of ignoring its own service regulations and resorting to transferring some officers by rough tactics.
The victimization, according to the irate officers, is to ensure that officers who frown on the misdeeds being perpetrated by their superiors are sent packing for fear of being exposed to the public.
A posting letter sighted by the paper dated September 19, 2014 and signed by Brigadier General JBE Guyiri, acting chief fire officer gave a directive that some officers must with immediate effect move from their current locations to their new places within a week after receiving the issued instructions.
But, according to the transferred officers, though the service regulation stipulates that one can only be transferred when one remains at a station for at least five years, that is not being adhered to by the fire service.
Checks indicated that some of the persons on the current list of transferred officers were recently transferred and have not even spent a month, only to receive letters transferring them again to another location.
�A group of persons have become victims of incessant transfer to the extent that they sometimes don�t spend a month at a particular station, before they are transferred again just to frustrate them.� One of the visibly distraught officers noted.
An officer, deputy chief fire officer Kwaku Ohene Obiri who was recently transferred from the legal department of the service to the Volta region, has within a year been transferred again to the Upper West region.
Another officer, Eric Nortey who has within less than two years been transferred from Amasaman station to Accra City Station and three weeks ago to Korle-Bu, has received a letter that he has again been transferred to Tumu in the Upper West region.
Also, deputy chief fire officer Edwin Blankson has been moved from Upper East regional office to the director of technical services at the headquarters. There are six other officers who have also been transferred.
Some of the transferred victims have stated emphatically that they will not honour such transfers since they are against the service regulations and are calling on government through the interior minister to intervene.
The Public Relations Officer of the GNFS, Ellis Okoe, in an interview with the DAILY HERITAGE explained that the service has no service regulation suggesting that one can only be transferred after five years at a particular station.
�We don�t have such a regulation that you should work for five or six years before you have to be transferred. This is a governmental institution, and every now and then people are transferred as and when personnel are needed in any part of the country.�
Asked to explain what then the service regulation of the service stipulates he said, �Come over to my officer, we can�t speak on this on phone.�
In the case of the deputy chief officer Obiri, he said �he is a superior officer and those transfers from the superior officers come from the fire service council. I will not be in the position to know why council did that so come over we will go and see the deputy chief fire officer and he will give you answers to that.�
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