Banking his administration on capacity building for effective and efficient service delivery, the Inspector General of Police, Mr. William Fayia Sellu, under the West Africa Police Information System (WAPIS) has launched a five-day training session on Quality Data Collection and Protection for 20 personnel from NCB/INTERPOL Unit, ACC and Immigration.

Addressing the trainees, the SLP Chief Executive Officer disclosed that the last time similar training was held, it was just about quality data but that today they were having another “Protection” been added to the 5 days training, commencing 5/12/22.

He continued that they now need to work on how to protect the quality data collected because there are laws and those laws need to be customised to fit the Sierra Leone situation.

“The quality of informations we collect is important and how we protect them is equally important” said IGP Sellu.

The Police Chief, assured the European Union that government is committed to ensuring WAPIS is sustainable but appealed for more work stations; noting, that the country wants to remain integrated to the system.

Training, he said, is not for the present task but to prepare one for something coming ahead which makes it very important.

WAPIS, IGP Sellu said, is an extension of INTERPOL – a global information sharing platform, thus, WAPIS was born out of the desire for Africa to entrench herself to things happening within her terrain.

Madam Serena Bertaina, from the EU stated that WAPIS is about building effective national, regional and international response to criminal threats including transnational organised crime, trafficking and terrorism.
The project, she went on to say, helps facilitate information sharing across all member states in the ECOWAS Region.

WAPIS Coordinator, Dr Mohamed Yansaneh talked of the 6 months work plan that will capture expansion of the project to other parts of the country.

The Deputy National Coordinator in the Office of National Security (ONS) Dr. Ahmed A Sannoh underscored the need for the training; noting, that the role of the SLP is to protect lives and properties, to ensure that criminals do not hunt people and put together necessary mechanisms to be able to counter terrorism. (mypatraining.com)