Ghana Police to get €3m new forensic laboratory

The Ghana Police Service will soon be proud owners of a modern forensic laboratory for scientific analysis.

The facility, being funded by the European Union (EU) at a cost of €3 million, will be equipped with state-of-the-­art facilities for DNA, ballistic, photography, blood and document examination and analysis.

The Ghana Service intends to commercialise the centre to make it more viable and sustainable to attract the best of brains for quality and best service delivery.

The Inspector-General of Police (IGP), Mr Paul Tawiah Quaye, made this known in Accra yesterday when he paid a working visit to the site of the laboratory in Accra to acquaint himself with progress of work.

He said the centre would also serve the training needs of police services and other institutions within the West African sub-region.

Mr Quaye said the government was committed to the establishment of a first-class forensic laboratory which would be the first of its kind in the sub-region.

He said the project, which was born out of a partnership between the government and the EU, should be seen as a good example of co-operation between developed and developing nations.

Already, he said, the Ghana Police Service had taken delivery of most of the equipment and indicated that the police could not fail the nation in the face of the massive commitment shown by both the government and the EU towards the project.

He recalled that during his inaugural address, President John Evans Atta Mills had promised to do whatever he could to equip the Ghana Police Service to help its efforts at combating crime in the country.

He said forensic investigation or the application of sci­ence in crime detection was what pertained in the advanced world, a development which has helped them chalk up a number of successes in high-profile cases.

The IGP, charged the contractors to endeavour to finish the structural work on the building for the project to be inaugurated in April 2011.

Source: Daily Graphic