Security Recruitment and the Exploitation of Unemployed Youth

Recruitment into Ghana’s security services is meant to provide an opportunity for citizens to serve their country while addressing unemployment among the youth. Unfortunately, the current recruitment process is increasingly raising concerns about fairness, transparency, and the financial burden it places on applicants.

In the past, young people did not have to purchase forms before being considered for enlistment into the security services. Recruitment exercises were conducted without placing an upfront financial demand on applicants. Today, however, thousands of unemployed youth must first buy application forms before they are even given the chance to compete.

During each recruitment period, long queues form across the country as young people struggle to purchase these forms. Afterwards, many must spend additional money at internet cafés to complete and submit their applications online. For many applicants, this process also involves transportation costs, time away from other productive activities, and the emotional investment of hoping for employment.

What raises even more concern is the apparent mismatch between the number of vacancies available and the number of forms sold. If the security services collectively have space to recruit about 5,000 personnel, why should hundreds of thousands of forms be sold to prospective applicants? This practice inevitably means that the overwhelming majority of applicants will be unsuccessful, despite the financial and personal sacrifices they make simply to apply.

Beyond the issue of selling forms, the online aptitude testing system introduced in recent recruitment exercises has also come under scrutiny for its lack of transparency. Many applicants have complained that after completing the online examination, they were simply notified that they had not met the required performance standard. However, the system did not display their actual scores.

This has left many candidates frustrated and confused. Some applicants insist they were confident about their performance and believed they had achieved scores well above the likely pass mark. One applicant even claimed he answered more than half of the questions correctly and expected to progress to the next stage, only to receive a notification that he had failed—without any indication of his score.

Such a system naturally raises questions. If the examination is conducted online, why are the results not displayed immediately after submission? In most modern testing systems, candidates are able to see their scores instantly. This transparency reassures applicants that the process is fair and that their results accurately reflect their performance.

When scores are withheld and applicants are only told that they did not meet the required standard, suspicion and dissatisfaction are almost inevitable. Transparency is essential in any recruitment process, especially one that affects the hopes and livelihoods of thousands of young people.

If the system displayed candidates’ scores after the examination, it would go a long way in reducing complaints and restoring public confidence in the process. Applicants would be able to assess their own performance and accept the outcome with greater understanding.

Recruitment into the nation’s security services should never be perceived as a revenue-generating exercise or a process shrouded in secrecy. It must be fair, transparent, and humane. One possible solution would be to limit the number of forms sold to match the available vacancies, or better still, abolish the sale of recruitment forms entirely, as was practised in earlier years.

Ghana’s unemployed youth already face immense economic challenges. A recruitment system that raises their hopes only to leave many feeling financially drained and uncertain about the fairness of the process does little to inspire confidence.

If the nation truly seeks to empower its young people, then reforms in the security recruitment process are long overdue. Transparency, fairness, and accountability must be the guiding principles of any system that determines who will serve in the country’s security institutions.

The Trial News