Security Agencies Are Ready & Prepared For Election 2016 - Police Service

The Ghana Police Service says they are ready and prepared to ensure violence-free elections this year.

Addressing stakeholders at forum organized by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) on election 2016, the Director of Operations Dr. Benjamin Agordzo said the Police Service is having training sessions for its personnel towards the elections.

According to him, the training sessions are aimed at maintaining law and order during and after the November 7 polls.

He noted that as part of measures, the Police have held a dialogue series with political parties and election stakeholders to address pertinent issues regarding the safety of their candidates.

He continued by disclosing that the security of the Presidential candidates are a top priority to the Police and so, the security services are committed to protecting them.

Supt. Dr. Benjamin Agordzo further added that other measures undertaken by the Police Service to ensure peace is reaching out to the citizenry; therefore the Service has rolled out an outreach programme under the theme "Safer communities before, during and after elections" to sensitize the masses about the election laws and their roles in safeguarding the nation.

“We have had several meetings with stakeholders in churches, in mosques and other places. Just last week the coordinator met a number of Muslim youths in Cape Coast. That is the kind of thing that we are doing to build confidence of Ghanaians in the Police Service and also in all the security services for them to know that we are ready for 2016 elections. The IGP has started tour of the regions…and some of things he’s doing to assess our level of preparedness of the personnel in the regions and districts, and also to inspect the monthly public order training programmes in all the regions that are being done.

“We are doing training in frontline violence response. We’re doing training in critical incidence response, essential service infrastructure protection, VVIP protection and we going to do training for [I mean integrated training for] all the security services…”
The Director of Operations further stated that border controls have activated to check the infiltrations during the election period.

”The immigration service are now carrying weapons to patrol our borders and these are part of measures to make sure that no infiltration during our election period or even bad times like terrorists and other things to ensure we safeguard our borders. Joint and Military patrols are ongoing. Emergency response plan is already in place...The security agencies are prepared for the elections. We are doing our homework and we’ll continue to do it.”