Majority Leader, Osei Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu, has expressed the need for security to be extended to the entire country following the death of the Mfantseman MP, Ekow Quansah Hayford.
Speaking in an interview, the majority leader who also doubles as the Minister of Parliamentary Affair also responded positively to the introduction of improved security for legislators by the interior minister.
“It shouldn’t take another life for us to say that enough is enough, and he [Ambrose Dery] felt that between now and the conduct of the election, Members of Parliament should be provided some form of security.”
He argued that these legislators are “assets to the country” and as a result extra protection is well-placed, further calling for improved security for all citizens.
“The Member of Parliament also has huge investments made in them by the state. The ultimate should be to improve the security in the entirety of the country and maybe the soonest we can do that the better it will be for all of us.”
Mr. Mensah-Bonsu further asserted that, the move by parliament to offer protection to the members of parliament isn’t a self-absorbed move at all.
“I don’t think it is self-serving. How many Members of Parliament may have to lose their lives? Shall we be happy if tomorrow, we wake up to see another Member of Parliament murdered in cold blood?”
Policy Analyst and CEO of IMANI, Franklin Cudjoe has waded in on the conversation via a Facebook post by describing the act by government to assign a police personnel to each Member of Parliament as a “Red Alert” move.
“Animal farm’ police politics aside, the government just increased the Red Alert security level by agreeing to farm out 200 Policemen and women to MPs. Not fair”.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Public Safety (BPS) has revealed that the decision to provide Members of Parliament with armed police guards will compromise the security of the masses.
Speaking in an interview, the Executive Director of the Bureau of Public Safety, Nana Yaw Akwada, says Ghanaians have been left vulnerable by that decision.
“The commitment he [Ambrose Dery] has made actually reduces national security which aims at providing security for the general population and offering such security to politicians and men of power. By so doing he has left the security of the ordinary Ghanaian to his vulnerable state. This is appalling, offensive, and indecent. This single decision sends a wrong signal to the many lives which have been lost a similar fashion”.
Interior Minister, Ambrose Dery on Tuesday, October 13, 2020, revealed that 200 police officers have been deployed to protect Members of Parliament (MPs).
This comes after the gruesome murder of the Member of Parliament for Mfantseman Constituency Ekow Kwansah Hayford on Friday, October 9.
Mr. Dery, who is also MP for Nandom Constituency, made this revelation to members of the Parliamentary Press Corps after an in-camera session with MPs where he brought the House to speed on efforts the government is putting in place to protect them after the killing of the Mfantseman MP.
“Due to the retooling of the security agencies by President [Nana Addo Dankwa] Akufo-Addo, the country has more security agencies and security personnel available.
“So we have proposed that, between now and the end of the year, we are going to provide an additional 200 police personnel to be part of the parliamentary protection unit.
“We are making this arrangement to ensure that the unit attains the status of divisional police command to take care of the Members of Parliament as bodyguards.
“Ideally to get to where we want to get to means that, subsequently, we should have 800 police added so that each MP will also have security at home in the day and night”.
