Malawi Police chuck out fake cop recruits from training camps

Malawi Police say they have finally chucked out fake recruits from its three training schools in Limbe, Mtakataka and Mlangeni.

National Police headquarters spokesperson Nicholas Gondwa said the police managed to remove over 300 fake recruits at Kanjedza Police Training School  (PTS) alone.

“I do not have figures for other training school but most of them run away after they knew that our officers were going there to vet them,” he said.

It is estimated over 1500 fake recruits turned up for training at Kanjedza, Mlangeni and Mtakataka training schools and took days for the police to finally screen and vet each one of them before retaining 1453 at all the three institutions.

This was blamed on corrupt senior officers who pocketed as much as K200,000 for each recruit, corrupt officials who wanted to enlist their relatives and children of their friends and ruling Democratic Progressive Party officials who forced the cadres into the police at the expense of suitable candidates.

Kanjedza has the capacity to take up to 773 recruits, Mtakataka can take up to 591 whilst Mlangeni can train up to 91 recruits.

“The training is going on very well, all the fake recruits have been removed and the genuine recruits have been given uniform,” said Gondwa.

He said next time the police will be extra careful on the matter to avoid similar situation which embarrassed the police.