The Minister for Interior, Ambrose Dery, has given the assurance that about 200 police personnel will be deployed to Parliament as day bodyguards to Members of Parliament.
These officers are to be distributed to the rest of the MPs who do not have any form of personal police protection as lawmakers.
The sector minister, who made the disclosure in Parliament after a closed-door meeting with MPs, said he has contacted the Inspectorper General of Police (IGP) to carry through the directive by the President.
According to him, “what we have proposed is that between now and at the end of the year, we are going to provide additional 200 police personnel to be part of the Parliamentary Protection Unit. Making it, therefore, attain the status of a divisional Command that will take care of members of parliament as bodyguards.”
He noted, ideally, “we need to have about 800 additional police so that MPs could get police at home, day and night as done for judges and Ministers of State.”
On the killing, the Minister said a special team from homicide unit and co have been deployed to the Region and the crime scene, figure prints were taken but no arrest yet.
The Sector Minister was in Parliament on Tuesday, 13th October, 2020, to brief Committee of The Whole on the assassination of the late MP for Mfantseman, Ekow Quansah Hayford, as requested by The Speaker Aaron Oquaye last Friday.
Mr. Quansah was allegedly shot dead by unknown gunmen on the Abeadze Dominase – Abeadze Duadzi – Mankessim Road in the early hours of Friday, October 9, while returning from a campaign tour at about 1 a.m.
On Friday morning at the sitting of the House in Accra, the Speaker directed that the Minister for the Interior should be in the House on Tuesday to brief the House on the incident.
His killing has renewed the calls for MPs to be given police protection as done for the article 71 holders in Ghana.
Story filed by Edzorna Francis Mensah.
