The National Service Secretariat (NSS) has introduced a new module for this year’s service personnel, which will see them deployed onto the streets to help manage traffic.

The module, known as the Urban Traffic Management, is to complement the efforts of the Ghana Police Service in traffic management in the country’s urban centres.

A total of 1,000 service personnel have been drafted into the new module and are currently undergoing a two-week intensive training at the Ghana Police Training School in Accra.

Speaking at the opening ceremony of the training programme yesterday, Dr. Michael Kpessah Whyte, Acting Executive Director of NSS, said 600 of the personnel in this module have been posted to Accra and 400 to Kumasi.

He said the module was developed considering the huge traffic congestion in the urban areas and the adequate police officers in the system.

According to him, each year, over 70,000 service personnel graduate from various tertiary institutions in the country and the module was appropriate to ease the pressure on the police in traffic management in the country.

Dr. Whyte said the service personnel would also engage in sensitising and educating the public about traffic management and road safety issues.

He said, the module would expose the personnel to police-civilian relationship and instill in them a sense of nationalism in serving the country.

Additionally, it would expose them to the operations of the police Service and erase the negative stereotype they might have about the police.

Dr. Whyte noted that the module could also serve as a pool to recruit personnel into the Police Service and was happy the personnel accepted the module.

According to him, none of the personnel was coerced into the new module and added that they would be paired with senior police officers on the field to learn on the job.

The Inspector-General of Police, Mohammed Alhassan, in a speech read for him, advised the service personnel to be disciplined, hardworking and exhibit good conduct and pledged the service’s support to them. He asked them as premiers of the module, to listen to their instructors and ensure that all their actions were within the laws of the country.

Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Alphonse Adu Amankwah, Director at the Police Academy, said the personnel would be trained in the topics such as Overview of National Road Safety, Urban Road network and Understanding Traffic Congestion and several field works.