The Inspector General of the Ghana Police Service (IGP), Dr. George Akuffo Dampare, has disclosed that the police service will henceforth hold deep stakeholder engagements with religious leaders ahead of their festive celebrations.
According to the IGP, the norm of deploying officers across the country to maintain peace and order during festive seasons will be enhanced by prior engagements with the relevant stakeholders.
Speaking during a visit to the Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission of Ghana, Dr. Akuffo Dampare underscored the significance of beefing up security, particularly ahead of festive seasons.
“We would like to have serious engagements at the divisional and district levels. I personally, with my team, will tour almost 92% of the country. We know every village, every town, every corner, and every community. We are yet to complete the processes, but we will get there. We are with you to serve you and to make sure that you live your lives to the fullest, to the glory of Allah.”
“And we have brought a new dimension to it, and the dimension is that anytime we are having any festive celebrations, long before the period, we will engage all stakeholders at all levels and get them involved and conscientise them so that they know that even though we continue to provide security during the festive period, security needs to be improved, because people are going to be traveling from far and near the capital, far and near across Africa and the world to the country, so they must be protected. During every festive period, we will double our efforts in terms of security.”
Meanwhile, the Ameer of Ahmadiyya Muslim of Ghana, Mauvi Mohammed Bin Sali, commended the IGP for his visit, highlighting its importance in history.
“I am highly pleased and humbled with the presence of the IGP of this country with almost his entire office, the top hierarchy of his office joining him from the CID to the national headquarters of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Mission. It is the first of this type. We don’t ever remember an IGP calling on us here. We don’t ever remember any senior police officer calling on us here officially to interact with us on issues that are of common interest to all of us.”
“So I can sincerely say that this will go down in history as the very first time the Inspector General of Police of Ghana has reached out to us, members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim community of this country. And for your information, the gentlemen that you have here, some villages were to join us, but I don’t know why they are not here.”