367 Community Police Assistants (CPAs) under the Youth Employment Agency from the Northern, Upper East and Upper West Regions, have successfully completed a five-week police training at the Pwalugu police training school in the Talensi district of the Upper East Region.
The 367 community trainees who went through community interaction techniques, traffic management, basic security tips, physicals and foot drills among others, will be posted to their respective jurisdictions to aid the police reduce the alarming crime rate and help maintain peace in the upcoming general election.
At a passing out ceremony at the Pwalugu Police Training School, Director of the school, ACP Victor Aduasah-Poku, admonished the recruits to champion community policing and proactively alert the police to act.
“I expect you to stand out not only as community vigilante but also a major source of hints regarding early warning signals of conflicts, calamities and disasters. Your status as (CPAs) enables you to posit yourself between the police and communities in terms of intelligence sharing and information flow about criminals.
It is important to advice the communities which you will be posted to, to welcome you and make life bearable for you to enable you carry out your work diligently. I also urge the communities to share with the CPAs their security needs and concerns since community policing is a shared responsibility” Aduasah-Poku stated.
He cautioned them not to arrogate to themselves the powers of the police and desist from extorting monies from drivers on the roads.
Upper East Regional Police Commander, DCOP Simon Yao Afeku, advised the recruits to eschew all negative tendencies that will bring their personality and that of the police service into disrepute.
He warned that, all recruits will be closely monitored in their line of duty to ensure effective policing and any recruit found culpable of breaching the ethics of the service would be sanctioned accordingly.
Upper East Regional director of YEA, Mr. Roger Ablimbisa said the programme forms part of President John Mahama’s efforts to provide jobs for the teaming youth.
He said YEA is targeted at training 100,000 beneficiaries by close of August, adding that, 20,000 Ghanaian youth have completed their training in the health module, 122 in prisons and 122 currently undergoing training in fire prevention.
“Out of the 367 recruits, 152 of them will be deployed to the Northern region, 96 to the Upper East Region and 119 to the Upper West Region”.
He added that, the recruits will augment the human resource capacity of the police service in providing security and safety in the communities, ensure safety and sanity on the roads and ensure a higher visibility of the police across all communities in Ghana.
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By: Frederick Awuni/citifmonline.com/Ghana