Police recruitment: Long queues at GCB as system goes down
The Police Service this year decided to resort to an electronic means in receiving applications as part of efforts at reducing the involvement of intermediaries.
Previous police recruitment have been marred by scams, with a recent one leading to the interdiction of the Director General of Human Resource, COP Patrick Timbillah in 2015.
With this year’s recruitment, applicants are to purchase vouchers at the GCB Bank across Ghana at the cost of GhÈ»100 and then fill out their details online at the police website since the mode of application is done only online. Selling of applications vouchers will cease on May 31, 2016.
The GCB has a software, Transflow, which it uses to sell application forms for various tertiary institutions.
It was with that same software which the GCB had planned to sell the police recruitment vouchers which was to go on sale Wednesday morning.
Information gathered by Graphic Online indicated that all was set for the sale to go ahead until Tuesday night when the bank was informed that the sales had been contracted to a consultant even though they would be using the same platform.
The said consultant was said to have visited the IT Department of the bank Tuesday night, ‘pushed some buttons and now sales can’t be rolled out,’ the source told Graphic Online.
A visit to some branches of the GCB by Graphic Online showed long queues of prospective recruits who had gathered wanting to purchase their vouchers.
Bank staff confirmed that the system had gone down. At some of the branches just three prospective applicants had been served as of midday since the bank opened for business in the morning.
At the Accra North branch near the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, the prospective recruits had formed a queue at the premises and had been told they would be moved in batches of 20 to the banking hall to be served.
The story was no different at the Republic House branch in Accra, Kasoa Market and Kasoa Main branches in the Central region which were also visited by the Graphic Online team.
Some of the prospective recruits said they suspected it was an attempt to sabotage the recruitment exercise, same as the previous ones which they had to endure the schemes of middlemen who duped them of their monies.