A Member of the Defence and Interior Committee of Parliament, Peter Toobu Lanchene, says the current budgetary allocation to the Interior Ministry could adversely affect the internal security of the country.
He is concerned that over 90 percent of the funds allocated to the ministry will be used for salaries and compensation leaving only about three percent for other operations.
The ministry was allocated GHS 821,908,161 and GHS 797,700 was going towards the compensation of employees for the first quarter of 2021 in the expenditure ahead of appropriation.
For the full year, GHS 3,290,801,702 will be spent on paying 71,593 persons employed under the ministry.
Only GHS47,551,035 will be spent on goods and services.
Speaking to Citi News, the Wa West Legislator thus advocated that various agencies under the ministry be given the opportunity to retain a percentage of their internally generated funds.
“If we know that without security we cannot have development and the constitution makes it mandatory and that this institution must be equipped and maintained to perform their traditional functions and the budget allocation is not enough, what it means is that the police service cannot perform to the optimum.”
Ultimately, he said the allocation trends will reflect badly on police work.
As an indicator, he said “you find a lot of cold cases at the CID headquarters. For example at the end of the year, if 2,000 cases are reported you realise that about 1,500 of them are all cold cases.”
“The cases have gone cold many at times because many at times, they do not have the capacity to pursue the cases. There is not enough funding,” he explained.
Source: Fiilafm/CitiNews
