A security consultant, Richard Kumadoe has said the number of students who have been evacuated from war torn Ukraine is not reassuring.
He noted that government may have to be more aggressive in mobilizing these persons in order to get them evacuated.
Speaking on Joy News’ ‘The Pulse’ on March 18, he said as a result of some people refusing to come back to Ghana, government’s efforts in evacuating its citizens from Ukraine has been unyielding.
He indicated that the 226 out of 1200 evacuated “definitely not encouraging and you can understand the insurgency of the issue here that the complexity of what we are looking at makes it more difficult for government agencies to be able to coordinate their activities in Ukraine very effectively. The only way to mobilize these people is to coordinate their activities and bring them to a centralized position.”
He continued, “ there must be a decision on the part of individual Ghanaians there as to whether they would want to come home or they have some other plans put in place beyond what the Ministry of Foreign Affairs can do. I think we would need to be a bit more aggressive in mobilizing them and we need to be more strategic in where we place them so that we can airlift them if that becomes an option on the table. Other than that 200 out of the 1000 we are talking about might not sound good.”
He urged government to collaborate more with countries where some Ghanaians have taken refuge to ensure their safety and security. “Should we record a death, government would be held accountable.”
Out of one thousand two hundred (1200) compatriots in Ukraine of which 947 are registered students with the National Union of Ghana Students (NUGS) only 226 have been evacuated from the war torn country to Ghana.
527 of them have been safely evacuated from Ukraine into neighboring European countries like Romania, Belarus and others.
