The Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) has announced that it will deploy ver 6,000 troops to support the Ghana Police Service to ensure maximum and tight security at the various polling stations.
Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Godwin Azera of the Lands Operations Unit of the GAF made this known at a day’s training for the selected media persons at the Burma Camp in Accra yesterday.
The exercise will be observed from December 4 to December 15, this year.
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Media training
Speaking about the role of the GAF during this year’s elections, Lt Col Azera said the roles of the troops would be to form rapid response teams and also serve as part of standby forces who would patrol polling centres, collation centres and troubled spots.
Presently, he said, a series of training and engagements for particular stakeholders, including the media and political parties, were taking place in other parts of the country, as well as the institution of measures to ensure the success of the elections.
Information security
In a presentation on the topic: “Introduction to information security”, Major Michael Naah of the Department of Defence Intelligence, GAF, stressed the significance of information security and said it was paramount to the conduct of this year’s elections.
“Security varies among the people and so security is a state of mind, which is the sense of being secure, and so journalists’ appreciation of security as they go about their work during the period of elections is very important,” he said.
GAF ranks
For his part, the Director of Public Relations at the GAF, Col Eric Aggrey-Quashie, expressed grave concern over the consistent mistaken reportage on ranks by media persons and urged the media to make a conscious effort to get the subject at their fingertips.
He took time to educate the participants on the ranks of the GAF, from junior ranks to commissioned officers and said both officers and soldiers were very particular about their ranks, since it took a lot of factors, such as basic fitness tests, medical examination, among others, to be promoted.
Source: Gossips24 .com
