GIS to post personnel to foreign missions
The Minister of the Interior, Mr Mark Woyongo, has announced plans to post officials of the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) to some selected foreign missions of the country, to facilitate the screening of foreigners before they are given visas to enter the country.
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He said ideally, there should have been immigration officials in all the foreign missions, but that had not been the case because of financial challenges.
He also announced that due to the high budget associated with such a deployment, the ministry would do it in phases.
For a start, he said, the deployment would target countries from where large numbers of people travelled to Ghana.
Mr Woyongo said this in reaction to a question by the Daily Graphic as to when immigration officials would be sent to the various missions abroad when the minister took his turn at the meet-the-press series in Accra yesterday.
Measures to enhance security
Mr Woyongo also mentioned the enactment of legislation and the introduction of CCTV technology on the country’s roads, as part of measures to deal with local and transnational crimes.
He said the measures were aimed at stepping up security operations within the country and prepare the police service in readiness to deal with terrorism and all forms of cross-border crimes.
On the legislation, Mr Woyongo said the ministry had placed the interception of postal and telecommunications messages bill before cabinet for approval.
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“The object of this bill is to enact legislation for lawful interception of postal packages and telecommunication messages for the purpose of fighting crime, supressing organised crime including money-laundering, terrorism, narcotics trafficking, identity theft and generally for the protection of national security,” Mr Woyongo explained.
He said crime in general, as well as organised and transnational crimes had assumed sophisticated dimensions and that Ghana, in line with international best practices and standards, had to be battle ready.
CCTV on Ghanaian roads
The Ministry, Mr Woyongo said, had signed a contract with Ahui Communications Services Limited, a subsidiary of China Communications Services International, to carry out a feasibility study on the introduction of CCTV cameras on roads in the country.
The project, which is to be executed at no cost to the government, he said, would help the police maintain discipline on the roads and also reduce crime.
Mr Woyongo said that as part of efforts to fight transnational organised crime and terrorism affecting the West African sub-region, the West African Police Information System (WAPIS) was inaugurated last Monday.
The WAPIS, he said aimed at creating a common police-information system in West Africa which would facilitate the sharing of criminal information on a timely basis and greater law enforcement co-operation within the region and the rest of the world.