The team visited border communities such as Sapeliga in the Bawku West District and Garu in the Garu District to interact with the chiefs and the people.

The campaign is intended to enhance the safety of Ghanaians and to encourage them to be vigilant to enable them to report suspicious individuals and activities that tend to jeopardise the country’s peace.

Hundreds of Burkina Faso nationals have fled their country over attacks and are currently seeking asylum in many border communities in the region.

Therefore the intensification of the campaign is to raise the consciousness of the people so that they can identify suspicious individuals who might have entered Ghana under the guise of seeking asylum.

Mop-up

At a media interaction after the community engagements, the Campaign Team Lead, Akosua Danquah Ntim-Sekyere, said the intensified campaign was to cover all beneficiary communities in the region.

“This is more like a mop-up exercise being done across the five northern regions, more especially areas that were not earlier covered since the commencement of the nationwide campaign,” she said.

Ms Ntim-Sekyere said considering happenings in neighbouring countries, every Ghanaian needed to be aware of the situation the country was likely to face if the nation’s peace and security were not safeguarded, she stressed.

The team lead indicated that ensuring peace and security in the country was not the sole responsibility of the government but a shared one, saying “As citizens, we equally have a huge role to play to protect the country’s peace.

Ms Ntim-Sekyere stressed the importance of residents alerting and volunteering information on suspicious individuals living in their communities for them to be handled by security personnel.

The District Chief Executive (DCE) for Bawku West, Daniel A. Atampuba, said the porous border in the district had opened the floodgate for many Burkinabes to enter the district and leave at will.

He said it was essential for the citizenry to be carried along in the campaign as they were the people who would divulge information on persons and activities that tended to destabilise Ghana’s peace.

The assembly member for the Sapeliga electoral area, Labila James Agoogo, who commended the ministry for the initiative, appealed for a security post and more personnel to protect them since many asylum seekers were in the community.