Policy analyst and Vice President of IMANI Africa, Bright Simons, is raising serious concerns about Ghana's search and rescue (SAR) preparedness and policy gaps in the wake of the fatal crash of a Ghana Air Force helicopter, GHF 631, which killed eight people, including two ministers of state and senior military officers.
In a detailed analysis posted on X (formerly Twitter), Simons points to a "complete breakdown" of Ghana's SAR protocol following the Z-9EH helicopter's crash.
According to him, the elaborate framework outlined in Ghana's own SAR manual, which should have triggered a coordinated multi-agency response, simply failed to function when it mattered most. "A military aircraft carrying VVIPs would normally have an Emergency Locator Transmitter (ELT) that sends an automatic distress signal to the global Cospas-Sarsat satellite network," Simons noted.
He explained that this system, coordinated internationally by ICAO and IMO, is designed to instantly alert Ghana's Rescue Coordination Centre in Accra, alongside agencies such as NADMO, the Ghana Maritime Authority, and emergency medical services.
