Over 6000 prospective applicants have missed the opportunity to become security personnel in Ghana after failing the medical screening as part of the requirements in the recruitment process.

During an interview with Accra-based Pan African TV on Saturday, May 23, the Interior Minister, Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, indicated that the disqualified applicants were disqualified in the medical screening stage of the ongoing security services recruitment exercise after testing positive for drug use or being diagnosed with mental health conditions.

According to him, his outfit introduced these extra examinations due to long-standing concerns about the mental health of the security personnel in the country. However, following the screening (drug testing and mental health assessments), more than 4,000 applicants failed the drug tests, while about 2,000 others were disqualified on mental health grounds.

“We have over 100,000 people who have gone through the medicals. Because of the large numbers and because of what we have observed within the services, we introduced additional checks, including mental health assessments and drug tests. Interestingly, over 4,000 people failed the drug test, and we have over 2,000 who also failed due to mental health conditions,” he said.

Mr Muntaka noted that the outcome of the screening highlights the importance of strengthening recruitment procedures to ensure that only qualified and medically fit individuals are enlisted into the security services.

About two months ago, President Mahama made a U-turn regarding the number of personnel to be recruited into the country’s security services.

Originally, 20,000 personnel were expected to be recruited, but was increased to 40,000. These recruits will be deployed gradually from now until 2029.

President Mahama, together with heads of security agencies, Interior Minister Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, and Acting Defence Minister Cassiel Ato Forson, reviewed and approved the decision on Monday, March 16.

According to a press release by the presidency indicated, “Following a briefing on the process, the President has directed that the number of men and women to be recruited to the various security agencies should be increased from twenty-thousand (20,000) to forty thousand (40,000) over a four year period”.

The Minority in Parliament had pressed the government to refund about GH¢113 million of registration fees collected from applicants who failed to progress to the medical screening stage.

Most applicants had been dropped from the recruitment process, which had begun the previous year, after failing an online aptitude test organised by the government.

The online test, which had been confronted with a lot of challenges according to reports, had been generated using artificial intelligence (AI).

In a media engagement on Wednesday, March 11, the Interior Minister, Mubarak Mohammed Muntaka, revealed that the government would only employ 5,000 individuals out of the 105,000 applicants who had made it to the last stage.

He further disclosed that about 500,000 applications had been submitted by Ghanaian youth.

He asked rhetorically: “Were you going to allow over 400,000 people to go and do medicals when you knew you had space for only 5,000? How fair were you to the people? You needed to devise a method to slow down the numbers and have a reasonable figure. So at 65, as we spoke, we still had 105,000 that had qualified for medicals when in actual sense the total number that we could now take after medicals was 5,000.”

Speaking at a press briefing on Wednesday, March 10, Mr. Muntaka explained that authorities had set the pass mark for the recruitment examinations at 65 to control the number of candidates progressing to the medical stage.

Reacting to the Interior Minister’s revelation, the Minority in Parliament had called the entire recruitment process a Ponzi scheme to extort from suffering youth.

The caucus had questioned why the government would accept applications from half a million persons when it intended to employ only a small number.

With immediate effect, the Minority in Parliament had pressed the government to refund monies collected from the affected applicants.

They argued: “Already, we had a national security threat and unemployment on our hands. You promised them jobs. You didn’t add any conditions. Then you turned around, you politically expanded the age limit from twenty-five to thirty-five, signaling that there was more room and more access, more financial clearance, which was a lie. You knew from the very beginning you were recruiting only 5,000, and yet you did all this to lure half a million people, took their money, milked them GH¢113 million cedis and over, only to turn around yesterday, after you had knocked them out by technology and internet disruptions from the aptitude test.”

The development had left scores of Ghanaians, particularly affected applicants, criticising the government. Some unsuccessful applicants said they had answered the questions without engaging in examination malpractice, yet failed the test, while others who allegedly outsmarted the system had qualified.

Prior to the test, the Ministry of the Interior Ghana had warned applicants against cheating, stating that the system used for the online aptitude test had been designed to detect and disqualify individuals who attempted any form of malpractice.

Some applicants also recounted how they had purchased recruitment forms for multiple security agencies, including the Ghana Police Service, Ghana Prisons Service, Ghana National Fire Service, and the Ghana Immigration Service, but had been denied the opportunity to proceed after failing the aptitude test.

Under the recruitment guidelines, applicants who failed the aptitude test had been automatically eliminated from the process, regardless of the number of forms purchased, since only one test had been taken for all the security agencies. Others disclosed that although they had initially qualified for the test, they were later disqualified after revisiting their recruitment portals.

Despite the frustrations expressed by many disqualified applicants, the Interior Minister, Mubarak Mohammed Muntaka, maintained that the recruitment exercise had been free and fair, unlike those organised by previous governments.

He explained that the government had introduced a third-party aptitude test with a pass mark of 65% as a measure to manage the large number of applicants.