A group calling itself Citizen Forum, has petitioned the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), over the recent Ghana Immigration Service recruitment exercise which saw applicants being charged GHC 50 each for registration.
Earlier this month, thousands of Ghanaian youth had to apply for only 500 spots in the Ghana Immigration Service recruitment exercise.
[contextly_sidebar id=”kUv5alV9CRBW4g21KhHlJX4gsOCqNFlS”]The group is asking the Commission to among other things, investigate and make pronouncements on the propriety of financial and administrative processes surrounding GIS and other public institutions’ recruitment, relative to the Public Financial Management Act 2016 (Act 921) and the Financial Administration Regulation 2004 (LI 1802).
Speaking on Eyewitness News, the Communications Director for the Group, Benjamin Alpha, explained that their petition is to also establish a standardized procedure that will guide public sector agencies in future recruitment exercises.
“Public service agencies like the Immigration Service cannot fix fees and collect same without recourse to Parliament, and we want CHRAJ to make a determination on that,” Alpha explained.
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.
Many have since described the Immigration Service’s Ghc 50 charge for the sale of e-voucher cards for the online application as unfair, after it emerged that the Service will only recruit 500 out of the total number of applicants to fill the limited available positions.
The Service has however explained that, though restrictions were given in a bid to regulate and limit the numbers, applicants who were not qualified still flouted the rules and purchased the vouchers.
“Inherent in the requirements and processes were restrictions to regulate and limit the number of applicants, such as age, height and even the period for the sale of e-voucher was also limited. Yet we had applicants who did not meet the basic requirements but went ahead to purchase the vouchers.”
Despite these concerns , the Immigration Service assured that “every money collected is well accounted for and will be judiciously used for the intended purpose.
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By: Marian Ansah/citifmonline.com/Ghana