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Monday November 12, 2018
The African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has appealed to the government of Ghana and the Ghana Police Administration to consider deploying a Formed Police Unit (FPU) contingent to Somalia to advance peace and security efforts in the country.
The appeal was made by the acting Police Commissioner of the AMISOM, Mrs Christine Alalo, when she interacted with 13 journalists from Ghana and Nigeria on a field visit to Somalia at the invitation of AMISOM.Ghana presently has a continent of 37 Individual Police Officers (IPOs) serving with AMISOM but has no FPU contingent in Somalia.
Mrs Alalo said the AMISOM Police was currently made up of three Formed Police Units (FPU) deployed from Uganda, Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
Appeal
The FPUs, Mrs Alalo said, played a crucial role in ensuring improved security in the liberated areas of Somalia which were occupied by members of Al-Shabab and other insurgent groups.
She said AMISOM, with 718 police personnel, needed 322 more to reach its 1,040 target, saying that such target could be reached with the deployment of two more FPUs from police contributing countries, including Ghana.
“We need five FPUs but at the moment we have only three and we will be very grateful if Ghana will give us one FPU.