The head of the Legal Directorate of the Ghana Police Service, Commissioner of Police (COP) Sam Awortwi yesterday presented a dismal picture of the police institution inherited by the Kufuor government. It shows the enormity of work staring the new political administration in that sector. It also poses the question: So what had happened for the past twenty years?

According to the Commissioner, the service has only 145 moving vehicles; of this number 6 are for recovery duties, 1 articulator, 1 fuel tanker and 7 motor hearses. These details came up when Mr. Sam Awortwi made a presentation on the state of the police during a roundtable on "Policing Problems in Africa". It was organised by the African Security Dialogue and Research and co-sponsored by the Media Foundation for West Africa and the Ministry of Interior with resource persons coming from Nigeria, Sierra Leone and South Africa.

Commissioner Awortwi had taken his turn after a research fellow from Nigeria, Mr. Lateef Aminu had treated the same subject but with reference to Nigeria.

Whereas Nigeria has embarked on a massive reformation of the Police according to Lateef, Ghana is yet to do so according to Sam Awortwi. Justice Archer's report and recommendations on how to reform the Police Service is comfortably sitting on a shelf somewhere in one of the government offices. Awortwi said in the Ghana Police Service in place of reform, changes are made as and when necessary.

The current strength of the service he said is 16,445 and that is a policeman to 1,100 people. A former IGP Mr, Kweku Kyei said when he was in the service twenty years ago, the number was the same and this shows that the number has remained static. At independence, there was one policeman to 800 people.

In view of major staff constraints Awortwi suggested that more policemen should be released from guard duties for general operations.

Accommodation is another problem bothering the service. On this he said the service has had to rent houses for service personnel, which is also difficult because landlords regard the police as bad tenants.

It is the bad elements in the service who have given the institution a bad name. These personnel engage in corrupt activities cryptically termed "field practices".

He chastised the way the police handle demonstrations. They should be managed and not controlled. He recalled the incident at Legon when in 1993 policemen opened fire on a number of students in their bid to handle a demonstration.

The recent stadium disaster, he said calls for reforms in the service.

Corruption (field practices) has far-reaching consequences on the realisation of the "Zero Tolerance for Corruption" as expounded by the President. The current political leadership has taken an unprecedented step in solving the problems of the service.

The Minister of Interior, Alhaji Malik Alhassan, in his keynote, mentioned that the government is pursuing partnership with friendly countries and international business organisations to secure resources to provide the police with vehicles and other logistics.

For the past seven months, he said, government has been laying the foundation for a Police Endowment Fund to supplement budgetary allocation. The results are encouraging, as many individuals and corporate entities have started sending substantial amounts of money towards the realisation of this goal.

The roundtable ends tomorrow.