Mubarak Mohammed Muntaka, the Minister for the Interior, has disclosed that more than 105,000 applicants have qualified for the medical stage of the ongoing security services recruitment exercise, although only 5,000 positions are available for final enlistment.
Speaking at a press briefing in Accra on Wednesday, the Minister explained that authorities set the pass mark for the recruitment examinations at 65 to regulate the number of candidates progressing to the medical stage.
He said the decision was necessary to make the recruitment process manageable and fair, given the limited capacity of the security agencies to absorb new personnel.
“Are you going to allow over 400,000 people to go and do medicals when you know you have space for only 5,000? How fair are you to the people? You need to devise a method to slow down the numbers and have a reasonable figure,” he said.
Mr Muntaka noted that the 65-pass mark was communicated to applicants before the examinations began as part of measures to reduce the number of candidates advancing to the next stage of the recruitment process.
He added that although many candidates might successfully pass the medical examinations, the limited intake means that only a small fraction would ultimately be recruited into the various security agencies this year.
“At 65, as we speak, we still have 105,000 that have qualified for medicals when in actual sense the total number that we can now take after medicals is 5,000,” the Minister added.
The ongoing recruitment exercise has attracted hundreds of thousands of applicants across the country seeking enlistment into the security services.
