Government is committed to resourcing the Police Service to combat the increasing spate of armed robbery in the country, especially on financial institutions, the Minister for Interior, Ambrose Dery, has said.
“You pass down a road today, the next day when you are coming there are three money transfer centres; so, these money centers are springing up; we might need some inter-institutional cooperation because each of these is a vulnerable point,” he said.
“Somebody sits under an umbrella [mobile money vendor]; she has about GH₵10,000, that’s a target for a possible robbery. We will need to work with Bank of Ghana to see what regulation and what minimum security they will need”.
Armed robbery is on the ascendancy in the country, with the most recent one happening on Tuesday, when armed men stormed Royal Motors, an automobile company in Accra, making away with the company’s sales in a stunning daylight robbery.
Similarly, there have been attacks on forex bureaux and mobile money transfer vending points, leading many citizens to wonder whether the security agencies are on top of their game.
Ambrose Dery assured Ghanaians, however, that government is keen to resource the police and other security forces to combat crime and added that the Police Service remains very dependable.
On whether the national security, Interior Ministry and Defence Ministry have failed Ghanaians on giving the populace the required security, he stated that: “I don’t think we have failed; each of them has its wing, national security gives us intelligence, defence gives us external protection and collaborative support and I do tell you it has worked very much. It is complementary and it’s a partnership”.
A study by Emmanuel Dodzi K. Havi on “The Economic Impact of Crime Rate on Economic Performance in Ghana” indicates that: “Nowadays, crime is no longer viewed as only a problem to a given society but rather it is an integral part of understanding a nation’s socio-cultural, political and economic situation.
Indeed, many commentators have said the high rate of unemployment in the country, which President Akuffo-Addo himself describes as a “time bomb,” must have something to do with the increasing spate of armed robbery.
Until the mid-twentieth century, Ghana’s crime rate was lower than those in other developing countries as well as most Western nations, the study disclosed.
