Deputy Ranking Member of Parliament’s Committee on Employment, Richard Quashigah, is urging persons whose applications to join the Ghana Immigration Service were rejected, to drag the Service to court over their Ghc50 initial payment.
According to him, the Immigration Service’s mode of application is fraudulent, and meant to exploit desperate unemployed people.
In a Citi News interview, Mr. Quashigah, who is also the Member of Parliament for Keta Constituency, said he was ready to lead the charge for the legal action against the Service.
The practice of selling forms for vacancies in the various security services has been the practice in Ghana for many years.
Mr. Quashigah’s comment comes in the wake of news that the Ghana Immigration Service received about 84,000 applications at the end of its 2017/2018 application process.
The number, which is seen as an exponential increase from previous exercises, has been explained to be as a result of the worsening unemployment situation in the country.
It later emerged that the Service will only recruit 500 out of the total number of applicants to fill the limited available positions.
While others have described as unfair, others believe the Immigration Service’s Ghc 50 charge for the sale of e-voucher cards for the online application was unfair.
Mr. Quarshigah said the Immigration Service must be made to provide details about this year’s exercise and answer key questions that bother on how it conducted the exercise.
“The Immigration Service will need to answer some pertinent questions. We do not think that unemployment must be an avenue for some other agencies to cash in and defraud young, desperate, vulnerable men and women of this country. That is grossly unfair. I am encouraging all young people from whom the Immigration Service collected GH¢50 previously, to take an action and go to court. I am ready to lead that charge on their behalf,” he said.
Citi News gathered that, the Immigration Service made about GHS 4.2 million in total sale of e-voucher cards.
Meanwhile, the Head of Public Affairs at the service, Supt. Michael Amoako-Atta, said the Service did no wrong with the sale of voucher cards as the money generated will be used to cater for the costs incurred during the recruitment process.
“We were using facilities of GCB and they are going to charge us and it is going to be come from this GHc50. Every phase of the process, like today, we have rented the venues across the country and we are paying monies for it. We are paying for logistics, ambulances; we are also going to pay for the marking of scripts. We are going to pay for the software we are using and other things along the line. Currently, I don’t know the percentage that will be coming from GIS. We might even delve into our own IGF until the process is over. We have to also pay for cleaning of the centres as well,” he said.