Accra, May 4, GNA - The Ministry of the Interior has initiated a programme for the development of Early Warning Systems (EWS) on internal conflicts in the country.
Consequently, a committee is currently being established to develop the policy framework on the early warning systems.
The work of the committee is part of the national strategy to reduce conflicts in various part of the country, improve public safety as well as reduce the unwarranted loss of lives and property. Mr Hackman Owusu Agyemang, Minister of the Interior announced this on Tuesday when he opened the second Internal Crisis Management (ICM) for Security Agencies and Ministries involved in disaster management at the Ghana Armed Forces Command and Staff College (GAFCSC) at Teshie, near Accra.
The three weeks course, which has 72 participants drawn from the various Security Agencies and organisations engaged in disaster management, is aimed at providing participants with a clear understanding of ICM in order to work more effectively and efficiently together.
Mr Owusu Agyeman said crises of all types could occur at any time and they could be man made or natural and what was crucial in such situations was the ability to prevent them and manage them in such a way that they did not cause substantial damage.
He called for appropriate measures to be put in place to ensure that participants at the end of the course would be able to manage such crises when they occurred.
Mr Owusu Agyeman said Ghana would be participating in the World Conference on Disaster Reduction scheduled for Japan in 2005. He said a national report would outline the various actions that were taken to reduce disaster in the country would be presented at the Conference.
The Minister further urged the participants to engage in awareness creation programmes to equip their various institutions to develop their own strategies for managing their internal crisis.
Major General Carl Coleman, Commandant of the GAFCSC, said the objective of the course was to build capacity in order to mitigate the effects of such crises when they occurred, create the right structures for reporting, monitoring and managing the situation.
He said, even though, Ghana had faced a lot of disasters responses to some of these situations had always been ad-hoc.
