Legal luminary and Professor, Stephen Kwaku Asare has revealed that Members of Parliament(MPs) who did not have state security protection received 10% of their basic salary to enable them to recruit security personnel of their choice for their personal security, stressing that the MPs were dishonest with their claim that the state provided no protection for them.
Followed the killing of the MP for Mfantseman Ekow Hayford, MPs renewed their demand for police protection. They argued that the Executive and the Judiciary had state protection whereas they, the Legislature, had no protection from the state.
Subsequently, the Minister of Interior deployed some 200 police officers to serve as personal guards for MPs without police protection.
But Professor Stephen Kwaku Asare ( Kwaku Azar) has described their claim as either misleading or “crocodile tears.”
“Yes, MPs who did not have state security protection were given a security allowance of 10% of the basic salary to enable them to recruit security personnel of their choice for their personal security.
So all the tears that some officials got security while MPs did not get any security protection was misleading or just crocodile tears,” he revealed.
Kwaku Azar stated that it was unethical on the part of the MPs who were receiving security allowance to pretend that they received no protection from the state, adding that it is criminal for them to now have state security protection while still receiving the security allowance.
“To have shed crocodile tears while receiving the 10% allowance was unethical.To receive police protection while pocketing the 10% security allowance is criminal, ” he emphasized.
The provision of police protection for the MPs has been criticised by a section of Ghanaians.
