The caution comes ahead of the reopening of the recruitment process, which was suspended after a stampede last Wednesday, November 12, which resulted in the deaths of six potential recruits.

Director-General of Public Affairs at the GAF, Captain Veronica Adzo Arhin, said in an interview on Eyewitness News on Monday, November 17, 2025, that stringent measures have been introduced to prevent overcrowding and maintain order.

“If you are a non-applicant, we appeal to the public not to try coming here. We will not allow you in. If it becomes necessary to arrest you and hand you over to the police, we will do so. So we request that the public not accompany applicants,” she cautioned.

She added that military police personnel will be deployed to ensure only valid applicants are admitted.

“We have beefed up our numbers. Even if you are an applicant and you come at the wrong time, I am sure that could even lead to your disqualification,” she warned.

Captain Arhin said the GAF is still struggling to understand the cause of last week’s tragic incident, especially as this year’s recruitment has been decentralised across all 16 regions.

“For the first time this year, it has been decentralised to all 16 regions. So we are still at a loss as to what led to the stampede. We have had large numbers before, just like this one, but there has always been some orderliness,” she explained.

She noted, however, that the institution will wait for the Board of Inquiry’s findings before commenting further.

“I wouldn’t want to pre-empt the findings, so I would rather hold on until the report comes out, so we can tell what really went wrong. We have always been doing this, and everything used to be at El-Wak,” she added.