The National Service Secretariat (NSS) has blamed the chaotic incident recorded at the La Dade-Kotopon Municipal Assembly (LaDMA) annex, opposite the Elwak Stadium, on the refusal of prospective service personnel to follow laid down procedures.
As Monday progressed, reports and images of military personnel beating persons massed up to register emerged online to some public outrage.
A lady reportedly suffered serious injury and bled profusely when a military officer hit her head with a stick in a bid to control the agitated persons massed up for a phase of the NSS registration.
Responding to these developments on the Citi Breakfast Show, the Public Relations Officer at the NSS, Ambrose Enstiwah Jnr “if the service personnel recognize the fact that there are laid down procedures and they will follow them and some of them would not want to circumvent the process, we would not have experienced what we experienced yesterday.”
The situation could have been avoided, Mr. Enstiwah said, but “people wanted to do things in their own way and naturally, you would have others who would resist and this is what caused some of this confusion.”
He, however, said he had spoken to the prospective service persons and expressed hope that “having talked to them, they will follow the process today and we would not experience what we experienced yesterday.”
Mr. Enstiwah added that the NSS was performing an audit of what happened with the registration and will strive to make things better.
The 2017 registration process national service personnel has seen the usual accounts of prospective personnel queuing up at dawn to register for the mandatory service.
Some of the persons who spoke to Citi News lamented that they began queuing at about 5:00am on Monday, but at daybreak, the military personnel asked them to re-form the queue which resulted in some confusion and an attempt to restore calm by the military led to a stampede.
Those affected by the Monday morning chaos were personnel who have been posted to serve within Ledzokuku Krowor Municipal Assembly (LEKMA) and La Dade-Kotopon Municipal Assembly (LaDMA).
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(Via: CitiFM Online Ghana)
