The Youth Employment Agency (YEA) has increased the monthly allowances paid to the Community Protection Assistants (CPAs) by 30 per cent.
With the upward adjustment, the beneficiaries would now receive a sum of GH¢500 as monthly allowances effective January 2023.
The Deputy Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in-charge of operations at YEA, Alhaji Bashiru Ibrahim, made this known at a ceremony in Accra to symbolically climax the successful completion of the training programmes held simultaneously for the first batch of the newly trained CPAs across the country.
The first batch of the CPAs numbering 5,000 beneficiaries represented one third of the 15,000 young men and women who are being recruited across the country over the next three months to assist the police in community security.
The training arrangement
The training arrangement followed an existing memorandum of understanding between the YEA and the Ghana Police Service (GPS) to provide auxiliary role in the service and help the police maintain law and order in the communities.
The CPAs trainees were taken through subject areas including community policing, traffic management, client care, criminal law and criminal procedure.
Others were criminal investigation and preservation of evidence, human rights, basic officer skills, and public order management.
The rest were crime prevention methods, basic education on terrorism domestic violence, ethics and code of conduct for law enforcement officials.
Good ambassadors
In his remarks, the Deputy CEO observed that community policing was the knowledge impacted into the personnel and for that reason they were expected hold on to that role and serve as good ambassadors of the agency.
He cautioned that the agency would not hesitate to dismiss any CPA who misconducted himself or herself in the course of discharging their duties by arrogating to themselves status of police officers and officer ranks to misrepresent themselves and thereby mislead the public.
He said such conduct was unacceptable and went on to cite an example of a CPA who made such false misrepresentation about himself to people in the area where he had been deployed to assist the police.
He urged the CPAs to comply with the rules and regulations governing their training to open windows of opportunities for them in future recruitments into the mainstream service.
He said the agency was poised and committed to the vision of the President to address youth unemployment and had already taken steps with recruitment drive into the traditional modules.
Successful programme
In his welcome address, the Commanding Officer of the National Police Training School (NPTS), Chief Superintendent of Police, Samuel Asiedu Okanta, described the training programme as a success due to the manner the trainees conducted themselves.
He entreated the graduating personnel to be disciplined at all times and endeavor to be civil in their dealings with members of the public.
You are to assist the Police to maintain law and order and win the hearts and minds of people whom we are mandated to serve with honour and integrity.
“You should respect and protect human dignity maintain and uphold human rights of all persons you will come across in the course of performing your duties as CPA personnel,” he said.
