On man’s priority needs, as propounded by Abraham Maslow, are food, clothing and shelter. Once these basic needs are satisfied, there is peace everywhere.
Abraham Maslow developed the hierarchy of needs model in the 1940-50s but this still remains valid today for the understanding of human motivation, management training, and personal development.
Undeniably, Maslow's ideas about the responsibility of employers to provide a workplace environment that encourages and enables employees to fulfil their own unique potential (self-actualisation) are today more relevant than ever, especially in the Ghana Police Service.
If anyone in society or the job market lacks these basic things, especially accommodation, it should not be the security agencies in the country, especially those in the metropolitan areas.
Throughout the country are our hardworking police officers, who despite all the challenges they face in their duties try as much as possible to provide us the citizenry with security. They, however, live in places that could best be described as deprived.
There have been many calls to provide the police with better accommodation and good environment to enable them to provide the public with the needed security.
The basis of Maslow's theory is that human beings are motivated when their needs are satisfied but certain lower needs need to be satisfied before higher needs can be satisfied. There are general needs (physiological, safety, love, and esteem) which have to be fulfilled before a person can act unselfishly.
The Effiekuma Police Barracks and other old and dilapidated buildings which serve as accommodation for the police officers in the metropolis could best be described as unsuitable.
At about 7pm one day this reporter and a friend visited a police friend at Effiekuma Police Barracks. Thirty minutes later, it started raining and the roof of the room started leaking like a basket. The officer was very embarrassed when his wife brought out large polythenes and covered their belongings and bed.
This situation is not peculiar to the Effiekuma Police. It is the same at other police barracks the reporter visited in the metropolis and districts in the Western Region. The bathrooms, kitchens are a sorry state and the general environment does not befit the status of the Ghana Police Service.
Most of the buildings were built with clay many years ago and have developed cracks. Some of them could collapse any time, any day.
Police officers living in the barracks have to use their meagre salaries to carry out repair works on them. Time and again, the police are accused of taking bribes and engaging in activities that would put money in their pockets.
What pertains at these barracks is a confirmation of Maslow’s theory of the satisfaction of needs, yet the state is not seeing to the fulfilment of the basic needs of the police.
No one should blame the police if they are seen compromising their positions because they have families and children with ever-growing needs. Their children study in mosquito-infested corridors and this does not give these officers the needed peace to operate.
Their children want to be like other schoolchildren in society. It is about time the conditions in the Ghana Police Service were reviewed to give it a new image to enable the personnel to perform their contemporary policing duties effectively.
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