A former Commander of the Formed Police Units, (FPU), Naa Hamza Yakubu has revealed that the vehicles that the banks are using as bullion vans could easily pass for bread delivery vans.
He has therefore called for immediate withdrawal of the so called bullion vans.
“The vans can only pass for bread delivery because they don’t meet even one inch of the specifications that is required to qualify a vehicle as a bullion van. They don’t meet even one percent and then you put a poor police officer on board and the police administration is looking on aloof’.
The Former commander’s comment is coming a day after armed men shot and killed one police officer and a woman at Adedenkpo near Jamestown in Accra. The police in a statement yesterday have threatened to withdraw their services if the banks will not provide fortified armoured vehicles for carting currencies by the close of June 2021 as earlier agreed between them and the [Ghana] Police Service.
Naa Hamza Yakubu who spoke on the 3FM’s Sunrise Morning Show, mentioned that the police have also failed to secure the safety of the police officers escorting the vehicles.
“They failed fundamentally to secure the personality of the people. They cannot give bullet proof vest? And from the benefit of hind sight provide them with ballistic helmet”.
He also questioned the police’s knee – jerk approach to tackling crisis, asking what would happen in the interim before the June deadline given by the police for the banks to have fortified bullion vans.
“In escorting a bullion van it is also unheard of to allow one single police officer to undertake such exercise. The least you can do is to put them in pairs, atleast in pairs of four, six or eight depending on the magnitude of the financial institution; instead you allow a poor police officer to go and face this”.
