A dark cloud has descended on the Bolgatanga Jubilee Park, where desperate job or recruitment applicants are being squeezed for extra cash in what many are calling a brazen extortion scheme.
The park, turned into a screening centre, was meant to be a place of fair process. Instead, it has become a scene of financial anguish. Applicants who had already saved GHC 1,400 for mandatory lab tests are now being told, at the gate, without warning, that they must pay an additional GHC 150.
For many young men and women who travelled from remote villages, the news hit like a thunderbolt. Having scraped together the original fee, they now found themselves stranded, phones pressed to their ears as they called parents and relatives back home, begging for emergency money to be sent via mobile transfer.
On the fringes of the park, so-called “connection men” are doing brisk business. These middlemen promise one thing: jump the queue and get screened quickly. For a price. They approach anxious applicants, whispering arrangements that bypass the normal process. Those who can pay get ushered ahead. Those who cannot… wait, or walk away broken.
“It is pure extortion,” one applicant, who asked not to be named for fear of reprisal, told our reporter. “We are being milked dry, and there is nobody to stop it.”
Local witnesses say the atmosphere is thick with frustration and helplessness. Some applicants have camped at the park for days, uncertain if even the extra payment will guarantee their place.
In response, civil society voices and concerned citizens are now calling on the Inspector General of Police (IGP) to intervene immediately. They want plain-clothed officers deployed to the Bolgatanga screening centre to arrest the connection men and stamp out the illegal levies.
“The IGP must act now,” a youth leader in Bolgatanga pleaded. “These are our children, our brothers and sisters. They are being robbed in broad daylight.”
As of press time, officials running the screening had not issued any statement, and the connection men continued their trade, cash changing hands, no questions asked, no receipts given.
Source: Apexnewsgh.com