We live in a country where recruitment scam is on an increasing high because people are desperate to land a job irrespective of the risks they’d have to take.

Now, the dangerous contract of sharing one’s salary equally for up to six months when a recruitment agency successfully gets one employed is creeping its head into the regime.

And it’s not frowned upon. Honestly, people are desperate and have no other options when it comes to a favourable way to land a job.

READ ALSO: Scores of Ghanaian youths turn up for GIS recruitment in Accra [Video]

So, for a government institution like the Ghana Immigration Service who were seeking trained personnel (trained as in graduates, Senior and Junior High School levers), you’d think the process would be more lenient and kind on its people who have laboured hard to be part of the labour force, but without success.

(1 dollar = 4 cedis 30 pesewas)

The forms for Ghana Immigration Service’s recruitment cost 50 Ghana cedis. The application is quickly rejected ones you don’t meet the minimum requirements for the recruitment.

Rejection of unqualified applicants is not something the Ghana Immigration Service could be blamed for but it underlines the fact that whichever number is on their list of applicants is lower than the number of forms sold.

READ ALSO: Only 500 out of 84, 000 applicants will be employed by Immigration Service

Why the ‘extortion’?

Extortion is defined as the practice of obtaining something, especially money, through force or threats.

Force in this definition can be excused but there is a huge threat of a government organization telling its citizens to either pay up for a chance to be employed or simply shut the f up.

At the end of the day, no proper accountability is made to the general public about how/what that money was used. It will just be part of the GIS’s finances or maybe not. Quite frankly, no one cares.

But here’s the wrong precedent when the whole form of pay for government recruitment is put in perspective.

What if MTN decides to charge 50 Ghana cedis for hiring 100 customer service personnel across the country? Which unemployed graduate wouldn’t want to work with MTN? So, they take the money for 80, 000 applicants across the country and hire 100. Do the maths.

Or any other private company decides to charge for employing the nation’s citizen to work for them.

Where would that lead us?

For a country struggling to even keep the those who are already hired employed, putting so much stress than the vulnerable unemployed can handle is the last thing.

The preaching of entrepreneurship and self-owned small-scale enterprises is always on the lips of Ghana’s leaders. But go to its roots and you’ll find the conditions are not favourable for that.

The established favourable process is to get someone to pay you for a period of time, quit and use the what’s gathered as the start-up.

Bank loans in Ghana for starting a business is a topic for another day.

For today, let’s bow our heads in shame of how a national organization ripped off over GHc 4 million Ghana cedis from the unemployed because they had no other option than to just shut the f up and hope.

Here’s the rough estimation.

Reports indicate 84, 000 people applied with an expected 500 to be employed.

That is 83, 500 people who will not be staff of the Ghana Immigration Service after the recruitment process.

Taking an application fee of 50 Ghana Cedis, the Ghana Immigration Service will make an estimated GHc 4,175, 000 from the vulnerable unemployed who could only hope.