The Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) has justified its decision to charge applicants GHC50 for the sale of e-voucher cards for online application, saying it followed due process in the recruitment exercise.
Following news that only 500 out of the 84,000 applicants were to be employed, some have criticized of intentionally making money off the country’s desperate jobless youth.
It also explained that unlike 2016 where applicants paid Ghc100, they paid GhC50 this time round.
“The cost of this year’s application e-voucher was reduced from GHC 100.00 to GHC 50.00 as compared to the previous recruitment exercise in 2016 upon the directive of government to all security agencies under the Ministry of Interior,” the Service explained.
The Service further clarified that, it has no intention of exploiting applicants as suggested by critics.
Per Citi News’ calculation, the Immigration Service made about GHS 4.2 million out of the sale of e-voucher cards.
Funds accrued from the sale of e-voucher cards, according to the Immigration Service, will be used to cater for the services of the GCB Bank Limited, the software developer and other administrative activities.
Ghana Immigration Service received about 84,000 applications at the end of its 2017/2018 application process.
The number, which is seen as an exponential increase from previous exercises, has been explained to be as a result of the worsening unemployment situation in the country.
It later emerged that the Service will only recruit 500 out of the total number of applicants to fill the limited available positions.
The Service explained that though restrictions were given in a bid to regulate and limit the numbers, applicants who were not qualified still flouted the rules and purchased the vouchers.
Despite these concerns , the Immigration Service assured that “every money collected is well accounted for and will be judiciously used for the intended purpose.
The Ghana Immigration Service, (GIS) has taken notice of news making the rounds in the media about monies generated from the sale of its recruitment e-vouchers for recruitment into the Service.
1. The Ministry of Finance late last year gave clearance to the GIS to recruit 500 eligible Ghanaians into the Service.
2. Management immediately set up a Committee to come out with modalities for the recruitment process.
3. Following from this an advert was subsequently placed in the National Dailies setting out the requirements for the recruitment.
4. The GCB Bank limited was contracted to be the sales point for the sale of e-vouchers across all their branches nationwide.
5. Sale of application forms is not new. This has been the practice in previous recruitment exercise since 2012.
6. The cost of this year’s application e-voucher was reduced from GH¢100.00 to GH¢50.00 as compared to the previous recruitment exercise in 2016 upon the directive of government to all Security Agencies under the Ministry of Interior.
7. Trybnet, a software developer was contracted to design an e-recruitment system that will help the Service conduct a very free, transparent and fair exercise.
8. To ensure integrity and fairness, the Business School of the University of Ghana was contracted to set questions for the aptitude test.
9. The desire of Management was to give each eligible Ghanaian an equal and fair chance of applying to join the GIS and in doing so, select the best among the pool of eligible applicants.
10. At the end of the sales, a total of 83,539 vouchers had been sold. Out of which a total of 47,477 applicants qualified.
11. It is instructive to note that the cost of the e-voucher was to cater for the services of the GCB Bank limited, the software developer and other administrative activities. The other charges were for the hiring of screening venues, examination Halls, ambulances, contracting sanitation companies to clean up both the examination and screening centers, provision of food and water for the screening teams and applicants among others, across all the 10 Regional screening centers.
12. It is not the intention of Management to cash in on the process especially as the misleading story on social media seems to portray. The process of the recruitment is not peculiar to the GIS, in fact that is the process used by all the Security and educational institutions.
13. Indeed, best Human Resource recruitment practices will allow for a large pool of prospective applicants in a recruitment drive such as ours to select the best in terms of education, experience, physique and other expertise that will be required.
14. Inherent in the requirements and process were restrictions to regulate and limit the number of applicants, such as age, height and even the period for the sale of e-voucher was also limited. Yet we had applicants who did not meet the basic requirements but went ahead to purchase the vouchers.
Management of the GIS therefore wishes to assure the general public that every money collected is well accounted for and will be judiciously used for the intended purpose.