BoG, Banks’ Negligence Results In Police Bullion Van Slaughter

-IGP Threatens to Withdraw Police from protecting Cash-in-Transit

Whatsup News can report that the protracted negligence and failure of the Bank of Ghana (BoG) to follow through its order to Ghanaian banks to acquire armoured bullion vans is responsible for the brutal slaughter of policemen escorting the rickety cash-laden pickup vans being used currently.
As of October 2020, the BoG recognized that the attacks on the soft-bodied bullion vans used by banks in Ghana was a national security concern, yet failed to attach commensurate urgency to the situation.
Consequently, on Monday, June 14, 2021, the Ghana Police Service (GPS) suffered another needless killing of one of its officers who was escorting a bullion van.
The robbers struck in broad daylight as the bullion van of Montran Security Company with registration number GT 8592 W was ambushed at Jamestown in Accra and shot the police escort, one Constable Emmanuel Osei. 
The young officer was shot in the head and died on the spot with his brain matter splattered all over the van.
Yet, on December 24, 2020, the BoG had written to the Alhasan Andani, the Executive Secretary of GBA, instructing the bankers’ association to force all Deposit Money Banks (DMBs) and specialized deposit-taking institutions to phase out the soft-bodied rickety pick vans used to transport money for armoured plated bullion vans.
Apparently, the BoG had met with these DMBs on October 15, 2020, to instruct them to acquire armoured vans to protect both their cash and the personnel transporting them. 
In the December 2020 letter from the BoG signed by Ms. Alethea Godson-Amamoo, the central bank admitted that there is an increasing trend of armed criminals ambushing non-armoured bullion vans used by banks to move cash about.
The BoG wrote that the order for banks to use bulletproof bullion vans was “as a result of the spate of armed attacks during cash-in-transit activities, leading to loss of lives, currency and destruction of sophisticated equipment.”
The central bank told the GBA to involve it in the procurement of these armoured bullion vans to “Phase out and replace all soft-skinned cash-in-transit vehicles presently in use with fit-for-purpose armoured-plated vehicles with European standard B6 ballistic protection for the passenger compartment and European standard B4 for cargo compartment.”
Apparently, this order was ignored and the BoG never insisted.
It took the Inspector-General of Police (IGP) James Oppong-Boanuh, after the latest robbery, to remind the banks to order the armoured vehicles that the BoG had ordered them to do almost one year ago.
“The IGP is also reminding the Association of Bankers to provide fortified armoured vehicles for carting currencies by the close of June 2021 as earlier agreed between them and the Police Service, lest the Police withdraws its officers from escort duties,” Sheilla Kessie Abayie-Buckman of the Public Affairs Directorate of the Ghaa Police Service wrote in a statement issued shortly after the gory robbery.