By Abraham Donkor
The Festive season is a joyous moment characterized by ecstasy. However, the joy is sometimes cut short due to incidents such as burglary, robbery, road crashes and recently Covid-19 and its associated complications.
The Police and other Security Agencies have mapped out strategies to reduce these incidents to the barest minimum.
Speaking to GBC News, a Security Analyst and Fraud Consultant, Richard Kumadoe said the Police have done a good job, but there has been less education on personal security.
He advised Ghanaians to be aware of criminals, especially those who use social media a lot.
”The Police have done well, education has been a little bit low but in the midst of covid people have taken very personal decisions to help them survive. Of course, there have been some few incidents of insecurity with dominantly road accidents. Few people have died during the festive period, but we say that going forward there is a need to take out personal security seriously. Especially those who pry on the internet, there is a need to leave a hygienic social media lifestyle and once they ask some of these things trending towards 31st December, where there will be massive activity on 31stv December. For Christmas, leaving home make sure your doors are locked, educate your home about personal security and a stranger is not a friend that you open your valuables to them, and once you can put up one or two and place them, keep the door locked and educate people to be observant, I think we will go through”.
FIRE CRACKERS
Touching on the use of fire crackers this festive season, Mr. Kumadoe called on law enforcers to revisit the regulation on these crackers and enforce the law.
He said Fire Service and Port Officials should tighten up their belts.
”Closer to the gas station then it could blast and kill a lot of people. I think the regulatory regime we need to be looked at again, the enhancement and enforcement of the due diligence procedures at the entry point, particularly the Port will need to be looked at again because that is where they came through and once they allowed them into the system and we have no system of regulating it, it has the tendency of creating security problems for us. I have heard the crackers. I have come closer to some of them, but I think we have let our guards down again and people manage to smuggle them into our system. We need to be watchful, the Fire Service will need to have Fire’s Extinguishers and they need to be a little more aggressive when it comes to some of these things. And the Police must enforce the standard laws as a regulator. If we are able to do some of these things it will help. Otherwise this year, again we have allowed the fire crackers to come even though we told the whole world they are banned in our country”.
COVID-19
Speaking on the rise in Covid-19 cases, Mr. Kumadoe said, there must be more education and communication about the virus especially with the new variant.
He said Covid-19 is a threat to national security and must be critically looked at.
“I think miscommunication, mis-messaging from people in charge of this whole Covid drive has let us down.Government brought the mandatory procedure to say that people should wear their mask, these people should have their Vaccines, but, then again you go more than that. Omicron is already here and we must communicate and educate people properly”. Definitely it has a great toll on national security. Remember the National Security Coordinator who has worked so well as a Director at BNI, died through Covid and many more prominent people have died through Covid and once you are losing your top brass, skills and techniques that they have not transferred, then you are losing your man power and you are losing people that will turn the economy around and it is something that we must look at it as seriously as possible”.
”When Covid came we said to everybody that, Covid is not just a health issue but it is a national security issue and that is the way we must approach it”.
”Security communication will need to be revised again and once you do that, we will be making some gains, otherwise the toll on the economy is huge, National Security is huge and health implications are very huge and these are not things we can toil with as a nation”, according to Security Analyst and Fraud Consultant, Richard Kumadoe.
