The recruitment portal meant for enlisting personnel for the security services will not be opened for new applicants in 2027, the Minister for the Interior, Muntaka Mohammed-Mubarak has said.
Rather, the security services including police, prisons, fire and immigration plan to draw from the existing pool of applicants who passed the screening and medical examinations in the 2025/2026 recruitment exercise but were not called for training.
According to the sector minister, the security agencies would consider qualified applicants from the existing pool, but the timing and size of the next intake would depend on financial clearance.
He said this when he led heads of the security agencies to appeared before Parliament’s Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, during its consideration of the 2025 Auditor-General’s reports.
He said the decision not to accept new applications followed an instruction from the President.
“Next year, there will be no new applicants. We are not going to open the portal,” he told the committee.
Mr Mohammed-Mubarak expressed hope that another batch would be recruited in 2027, but said the ministry was yet to secure the necessary financial clearance for the exercise.
He said he was pushing for approval to recruit an additional 10,000 personnel, although he could not state when the next batch would begin training or how many applicants would be selected.
The committee chairperson had asked how the ministry intended to address the concerns of applicants who had completed the recruitment process and received notifications but were still waiting at home to be called for training.
She also raised concerns about the expiry of financial clearance on December 31, citing the Ghana Immigration Service as an example.
Mr Mohammed-Mubarak explained that the ministry had obtained financial clearance to recruit 10,000 personnel, but the number of applicants who passed the recruitment process exceeded the available places.
He said the recruits currently undergoing training were expected to complete their programmes by the end of December, creating room for another batch.
“Resources are not unlimited,” he said.
Mr Mohammed-Mubarak said the Ghana Police Service currently had about 50,000 personnel, against an estimated requirement of between 70,000 and 80,000.
He explained that even if clearance were granted to recruit 20,000 or 30,000 personnel, the available training facilities would not accommodate all the recruits at once.
Recruitment and training would, therefore, have to be carried out in batches.
Age limits
The committee chairperson also asked what would happen to applicants who had passed the recruitment process but exceeded the prescribed age limit while waiting to be called for training.
Mr Mohammed-Mubarak said the ministry would consider the matter when the situation arose. He added that he would not want to make such a decision alone without consulting his team.
He also said female applicants who became pregnant after passing their medical examinations but before being called for training had been asked to return home to deliver.
According to him, those applicants would be considered for recruitment during the next round.
Previous recruitment figures
The 2025/2026 recruitment exercise, conducted through the Centralised Services E-Recruitment Portal (C-SERP), covers the Ghana Police Service, Ghana Prisons Service, Ghana National Fire Service and Ghana Immigration Service.
The portal opened on November 17, 2025, and closed on December 19, 2025.
On March 11, 2026, Mr Mohammed-Mubarak said about 390,000 people had initially applied to join the four services.
He said more than 100,000 applicants had passed the aptitude test, which required a minimum score of 65 per cent, while about 105,000 had qualified for medical examinations against approximately 5,000 available places.
“The total number that we can now take after medicals is 5,000,” he said at the time.
He added that the President had directed the ministry to retain the records of applicants who passed the medical examinations.
On May 23, 2026, the minister said the President had intervened with the Minister of Finance to double the recruitment intake from 5,000 to 10,000.
He said more than 100,000 applicants had undergone medical examinations, with more than 4,000 failing the drug test and over 2,000 being disqualified on mental health grounds. About 1,300 applicants were also reported to have been disqualified after testing positive for HIV.
