The Center for Public Opinion and Awareness (CenPOA) has called on the Government of Ghana to abolish the practice of charging application fees for recruitment into the country’s security services.
This is contained in a press release issued by CenPOA.
“Over the years, applicants seeking to join agencies such as the Ghana Police Service, Ghana Immigration Service, Ghana National Fire Service, and the Ghana Prisons Service have been required to purchase recruitment vouchers before they can begin the application process. This practice raises serious ethical and policy concerns,” the release signed by Mr Michael Donyina Mensah said.
It noted that, “At a time when thousands of young Ghanaians are struggling with unemployment, asking them to pay money merely for the opportunity to apply for public service jobs creates an unnecessary financial barrier. Many applicants purchase these forms despite having no assurance of progressing beyond the first stage of the recruitment process.”
CenPOA added that, “Even in the private sector, where companies operate primarily for profit, it is uncommon for employers to charge job seekers to participate in aptitude tests, screening processes, or medical examinations before employment. It is therefore difficult to justify why public institutions—whose mandate is service to citizens—should require unemployed youth to pay before they are even assessed for suitability. The scale of the issue is also significant. Recruitment exercises into the security services attract hundreds of thousands of applicants each year. With application vouchers typically priced between GH¢100 and GH¢220 in recent years, recruitment cycles have generated tens of millions of cedis from applicants.”
“Yet there has been little transparent public accounting of how these monies are utilized. This lack of transparency risks creating the perception that the recruitment system is being used as a mechanism to generate revenue from unemployed young people rather than solely to recruit qualified personnel for national service.
Such perceptions are damaging and undermine public trust in the recruitment process,” Mr Mensah stated.
He noted that, “the current system risks excluding capable and qualified candidates simply because they cannot afford the recruitment fees. In effect, money becomes a gatekeeper to public service—an outcome that undermines the principle of merit-based recruitment. CenPOA believes that this issue presents an important opportunity for reform under the Reset Agenda being advanced by the administration of John Dramani Mahama. If the Reset Agenda is to truly represent a new direction in governance—one that prioritizes fairness, transparency, and citizen-centered policy—then eliminating financial barriers that prevent young people from accessing public service opportunities should be a natural starting point.”
CenPOA therefore called on the Government of Ghana to consider the following reforms:
1. Abolish recruitment application fees for Ghana’s security services to ensure fair and equitable access for all qualified applicants.
2. At the very least, make the early stages of recruitment—such as online screening and aptitude testing—free of charge, with any administrative costs only arising after candidates have successfully passed preliminary assessments.
3. Provide transparent public accounting of revenues generated from previous recruitment exercises, including how these funds have been utilized.”
