The Ghana Network for Peace building (GHANEP), is supporting surveillance teams in 15 conflict flash points in five regions to identify and to report early warning signal to the security apparatus for action.
The pilot flash points communities are Bunkpurugu/Yunyoo, Gushiegu, Bimbilla, Buipe, Tamale and Yendi in the Northern Region.
The rest are Talensi-Nabdam, Bawku and Zebilla in the Upper East Region; Gaa, Nyoli, Nadowli and Wa West in the Upper West Region and Zongo and Adaklu Anyigbe in Brong Ahafo and Volta regions respectively.
The surveillance teams are to identify the cultural, social and economic ties of the people in the communities and to liaise with institutions such as chieftaincy and youth groups to see how best they could coexist for peace and development.
The Department for International Development (DFID) through Christian Aid is sponsoring GHANEP under its Ghana Alert Project to support the communities as a means of averting conflicts.
The Ghana Alert project of GHANEP is designed to cover three main areas namely, building capacity and ownership of peace building, increasing collaboration of stakeholders and civil society groups in peace-building and establishing national early warning systems.
In a meeting with some of the surveillance teams from the Northern Region in Tamale on Monday, Mr Albert Yelgang, Data Analyst at GHANEP Early Warning Centre, advised members to work diligently to ensure that their work yielded positive results.
He said there was the need as part of their work to trace the historical positions of conflicts in flash points communities and the nature of the conflicts in order to provide reliable recommendations.
Mr Yelgang said reports from some of the teams so far had helped to identify chieftaincy, family, intra-party conflicts, land and cross border related issues.
He said some of the conflicts were avoidable if politicians stopped fanning them and expressed the hope that the surveillance teams would be extended to other areas after a successful outcome of the pilot of phase.
Mr Yelgang advised members of the teams to promptly alert GHANEP on any suspicious character or actions of individuals that had the tendency of generating into conflict.