[ 2017-03-30 ]

Superior Fire Officers 'charged illegal fees' for promotion - Junior officers al
Some fire officers in the Upper East region have
decried alleged demands for cash by their
superiors at the regional headquarters before they
are handed promotions due them.

The firefighters confided to Starr News that
officers seeking to be upgraded are charged
unfixed amounts as contributions for assistance
during promotion examinations and, when the
examinations are over, they are levied Gh¢40 each
for upgrading processing.

“Recently, they charged 97 officers GH¢40
before they were promoted.

Calculate it. Multiply the 97 people by GH¢40.
Our superiors normally would demand for these
monies as charges to facilitate inputs for
promotions. They also charge some monies…they
don’t have a specific amount- for examiners. The
monies are given to examiners and invigilators to
allow for officers to teach each other or to teach
those who cannot write,” a fire officer told
Starr News in a recorded interview.

“It is a like normal practice now. If there is a
promotion exam or you need something to be done,
you must pay for inputs. But my year, they said
each person should pay contributions for
examiners. I didn’t pay. I said I don’t have
money. But I paid the Gh¢40 for my promotion,”
another officer recounted.

We buy rank markings meant for free - officers

A number of the aggrieved officers have also
claimed that the laces and badges worn among other
insignia on the khaki uniforms to show their ranks
are being sold to them by their bosses, contrary
to the norm that strongly frowns on attempts to
put up such emblems of authority for sale.

“The normal thing is that after you have been
promoted, you go and sign and pick the rank
markings for free and wear them on your uniform to
show your new status. But in this case, the
materials are not in the stores. They tell you
they are not available. But some senior officers
have those materials in their hands and are
selling them to newly promoted officers.

“You ask yourself how come the stores mostly
don’t have the rank markings but how some
individuals have them and are selling them. This
is a million-dollar question we should ask for
answers. The reality is that some individuals have
created that unavailability or artificial scarcity
of the rank markings in order to sell them to make
money. We buy them. That’s what happens,” an
officer complained.

Of a critical concern to the disturbed officers is
also what they describe as an “improper” way
of handling issues whenever internal conflicts
erupt among the personnel and are reported to the
regional command. They claim junior officers
involved in a row with their seniors are never
heard but rather handed disciplinary transfers
without hesitation.

“You have a problem with somebody who is closer
to a big man. He just reports you that you have
done this. They will not set up a committee to
look into the matter whether you really did it. An
independent committee should be set up to
interview both parties and recommendations given.
People just put laws aside and use their own
discretion and even ranks to intimidate people.

“It’s not good for the service. This is an
emergency work and people need to be happy. People
are sitting and angry. And when they are going to
quench fire, how are they going to save lives? How
can an angry person go and save lives? It’s not
about the salaries. It’s the motivation in terms
of the way the big men relate to [the junior
officers] in the service. They use their ranks to
intimidate the junior officers. It’s something
dampening the morale of service personnel. And
with that, productivity would be low,” a
firefighter said.

Agitated officers not clean- Regional Command
reacts

When Starr News contacted the regional fire
command, the Upper East Regional Fire Officer, ACO
Douglas Kouyiri, hit back strongly at the agitated
officers.

He described their claims as an attempt to smear
innocent senior ranks with unfounded lies and said
no one but the same disconcerted officers
themselves were to blame for the alleged payment
of the “illegal fees”.

He confirmed that monies were being paid by
officers in return for aid during promotion
examinations and also for the facilitation of
their promotion inputs, but said such arrangements
were consciously being made by the officers
themselves without the regional command involved.

The Regional Fire Officer said he continually had
overlooked such affairs on compassionate grounds
considering the unfortunate reality that officers
who were due for upgrading and higher salaries
might have to wait for eternity if they were not
allowed to ‘bribe’ their way through with
those responsible for facilitating their promotion
outside the realm of the fire service.

He also dismissed claims that some senior
personnel had hoarded rank markings for the
purposes of cashing in on an artificial scarcity
created.

The Regional Fire Officer said some rank markings
actually had been short in supply from the
national headquarters, leaving newly promoted
officers and those with worn-out badges or without
name tags to the mercy of some individuals who had
been designing such materials for sale.

A few samples of the rank markings, said to be the
only materials left in the regional store and only
meant for some particular ranks, were brought out
to the office of the regional fire commander at
his request to support his claims that the stores
were not empty but only did not have all the
markings for the respective ranks of all the
officers under the regional command.

He said the shortage of insignia and accoutrements
was not peculiar to the fire service alone and
that he expected officers to be responsible enough
to buy the markings on their own and not depend on
the headquarters or government for everything to
look respectable in public all the time.

A number of officers testified to Starr News at
the regional fire commander’s office that they
bought their rank markings with their own monies
from private designers elsewhere after they had
realised that a wait on their employers for supply
was never going to end.

ACO Kouyiri also described as baseless the
allegations that the command had been biased,
dishing out disciplinary transfers to officers at
loggerheads with their superiors. He said there
had been no such punitive transfers since he took
over the reins of the command.

Meanwhile, the Regional Fire Officer has sworn to
dig out the fire officers who confided in Starr
News and to have them punished for going public
with those concerns against what he called the
paramilitary rule of the fire service. He also
swore to henceforth put a stop to arrangements of
enticement package for examiners, invigilators and
promotion facilitators as another batch of fire
officers braces for the next promotion examination
this June.

Source - Starrfmonline.com

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