Cabinet has issued a clear directive, and the Speaker of Parliament has brought it to the House.
No person, official or private, shall install or use a siren on any vehicle without prior written authorisation from the Minister for the Interior.
No person shall also use police resources, particularly police escort services, without the requisite written approval of the Minister for the Interior or the Inspector General of Police acting on his behalf. To give it teeth, the Ghana Police Service has been ordered to enforce it.
That means removal and seizure of unauthorised sirens, immediate withdrawal of unauthorised escorts, and legal action where necessary. It is a directive long overdue.
Police personnel, patrol vehicles, motor riders and fuel are paid for by taxpayers.
They exist to maintain law and order, protect life and property, and preserve public safety. They are national assets, not status symbols. Yet, over the years, we have watched the opposite.
Convoys with sirens blaring through traffic for non-emergencies. Police escorts trailing private events. Sirens mounted on SUVs that have nothing to do with emergency response.
The result is predictable. Real emergencies get delayed because drivers no longer know which siren to respect. Public confidence in lawful authority erodes.
And officers who should be on patrol or investigating crime are tied up as glorified chauffeurs. Cabinet’s directive seeks to end that culture.
The indiscriminate installation and use of sirens undermine road safety. It also diminishes the effectiveness of emergency and security services whose operations genuinely require priority access.
Think about that. An ambulance carrying a woman in labour loses seconds because three other vehicles with fake sirens are cutting lanes. A fire tender is blocked because a motorist assumes every siren is a bluff.
A police response team is late to a crime scene because half the unit is on an unauthorised escort duty.
Sirens are not accessories. In law, they confer a privilege: the right to demand right of way because you are saving lives. When that privilege is abused, it becomes a danger.
The same applies to police escorts. Every officer assigned to escort duty is an officer taken away from the station, the community, or an investigation.
If there is no documented threat assessment and no written approval, then that deployment is a misuse of a scarce resource.
Process exists for a reason. It ensures fairness, documentation, and accountability. The directive is not creating new law. It is enforcing existing law that has been ignored for too long.
The police have their marching orders: seize unauthorised sirens, withdraw unauthorised escorts, and prosecute offenders.
For this to work, enforcement must be consistent and fearless. The test will come the first time a siren is removed from the vehicle of a high-profile person, or the first time an escort is withdrawn mid-route. If the police hesitate, the directive will collapse.
Beyond traffic and escorts, this directive is about trust. When citizens see that the law applies to everyone, trust in institutions grows.
When they see sirens and escorts used as status symbols, cynicism grows. Cynicism is what kills compliance. Why should a commercial driver respect a traffic officer if he sees a politician break the same rule with impunity?
The Police and the National Road Safety Authority should run a campaign explaining what a lawful siren is, and why abuse endangers everyone.
Cabinet has spoken. Parliament has been notified. The police have been directed. Now comes the hard part: compliance. For too long, sirens and escorts have been treated as part of the trappings of office. They are not. They are tools of the state, to be used only when the law and public safety demand it.
The directive to MPs applies to all of us: those who make the laws must be the first to obey them.
That is how we build a country where rules matter more than rank. No siren is above the law. No escort is above the process. And no Ghanaian is above accountability.
Let the enforcement begin, and let it be fair. The public is watching, and the law demands nothing less.
