The Deputy Minister of Defence, Maj. Rtd. Derrick Oduro has urged the media not to focus on the excesses of security officers deployed to enforce the COVID-19 lockdown.
Accordingly, there have been only a few cases of excesses by the security officers which should not overshadow the yeoman’s job they’ve done during this exercise.
There has been a lot of disquiet over security operatives allegedly brutalizing civilians during the lockdown. A civilian was accidentally shot and killed by a soldier at Ashaiman over the weekend when he reportedly engaged a soldier in a scuffle.
However, Maj. Rtd Oduro in an interview with Joy News monitored by Kasapafmonline.com stated that it is better for a soldier to brush a civilian’s face with a cane than for people to die from Coronavirus.
He nonetheless assured that incidents of excesses with be thoroughly investigated.
“A lot of the video clips that we are seeing on social media are fake. Some are real maybe a soldier brushing the eyes of a recalcitrant person with some cane…It is better than to be infected with the disease and you going round to infect others and a whole number of people will die. If someone prevents you from moving if you don’t have any business let’s condemn those who are doing that. Don’t let us give publicity to them. It is not written anywhere that they (security officers) should treat them(civilians) that way. We are investigating them if they are found to have performed wrongly, we’ll deal with them. We are not happy that it’s all over the place…military brutalizing people. About 99% of the operation that we are conducting is successful,” he explained.