General News of Saturday, 17 March 2018

Source: mynewsgh.com

Vodafone disconnects lines to police service over nonpayment of bills

COP Ken Yeboah, Ashanti Regional Police Commander COP Ken Yeboah, Ashanti Regional Police Commander

An accrued debt by the Ghana Police Service throughout the country has resulted in the truncation of the telephony service to the security agency.

Ashanti Regional Police Commander, COP Ken Yeboah who revealed this to Kwame Adinkra on Kumasi-based Abusua FM said his office has no landline because the service for a period has been unable to service its debts.

Though he will not divulge exactly how much is in arrears the Police Service is supposed to pay to Vodafone for services it [Police] enjoyed, he was worried about the development in the wake of the increasing cases of robberies in the country

“The problem is across Ghana because we rely on government subvention to cater for some of these overhead costs. But for some time now, we have been constrained and this has led to the disconnection of our lines. As I speak, I use my own mobile phone and the GoTTa phones”, he revealed.

The Police Chief was unable to reveal exactly when they have stop benefitting from Vodafone service but said it is part of the constraints against crime fight in the country.

It would be recalled that in 2012, Vodafone Ghana refurbished the Communication unit of the Ghana Police Service, and installed a state of the art telephone equipment with enhanced call features that will allow the service to respond to crime reports speedily.

With the installation of the PABX telephone system, personnel of the communication unit was able to receive multiple calls from the public and treat in-bound calls with utmost confidentiality in a comfortable office environment.

The old setup presented challenges that restricted the smooth and swift operations of the Ghana Police Service.

Prior to the new installation, the communication unit had only ordinary desk phone lines that could receive one call at a time.

It is unclear if the current disruptions has affected this state of the art telephone equipment installed by the police service.