Ministry of the Interior has deployed 200 police officers to serve as guards to Members of Parliament (MPs) till the end of the year.
The officers will operate under the Parliamentary Protection Unit to guard 200 MPs who are not ministers of state.
About 75 MPs who are ministers or deputy ministers already have body guards.
Minister for the Interior Mr Ambrose Dery announced this yesterday after a closed-door meeting with the lawmakers.
Mr Dery who is also the MP for Nandom told members of the Parliamentary Press Corps that under the new arrangement every MP will be entitled to a police officer as a bodyguard.
He also disclosed that plans are underway to provide 800 additional police officers to protect the homes of the MPs.
“Due to the retooling of the security agencies by President Akufo-Addo, the country has more security agencies and security personnel available. So we have proposed that, between now and the end of the year, we are going to provide an additional 200 police personnel to be part of the parliamentary protection unit. We are making this arrangement to ensure that the unit attains the status of divisional police command to take care of the Members of Parliament as bodyguards.
“Ideally to get to where we want to get to means that, subsequently, we should have 800 police added so that each MP will also have security at home in the day and night,” the minister stated.
Mr Ambrose Dery was summoned by the House following the killing of Mfantseman MP, Ekow Quansah Hayford.
The MP was returning from a campaign trip with some constituency executives of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) when armed men stopped the vehicle on which they were travelling at a road block the robbers had mounted and shot him, killing him instantly.
Arrest MP’s killers-Akufo-Addo
President Nana Akufo-Addo has instructed the Inspector General of Police (IGP), Mr James Oppong-Boanuh, to make sure that the killers of the Mfantseman MP, Mr Ekow Quansah Hayford, are brought to book.
Describing the murder of the MP as a big blow to him, the President, speaking in Twi, said he had made the IGP aware that if nothing good came out from the police on the incident, “there will be dire consequences”.
During a visit to the bereaved family to commiserate with them in Mankessim on Monday, President Akufo-Addo revealed that he had pencilled Mr Hayford in for a position in his next term as President.
Brilliant MP
Eulogising the slain MP, President Akufo-Addo said he acquitted himself in his first term in Parliament.
“There was no doubt that Mr Hayford was going to win the 2020 parliamentary election in the constituency, and he was one MP I was going to rely on to help advance the cause of this government.
“In all the happenings, however, God knows best,” President Akufo-Addo said.
