UPPER EAST IMMIGRATION OFFICERS UDRGO TRAINING (PAGE 48)

FIFTY Immigration officers in the Upper East Region have benefited from a training programme designed to improve the skills of personnel and equip them with modern tools to enable them to detect fraud and enhance their intelligence gathering technique.
The training programme, called the Aeneas Programme, forms part of efforts by the Ghana Immigration Service to enhance the work of the service and eliminate fraudulent acts by travellers who enter the country.
The workshop, which was sponsored by the European Union Commission, would be carried out in all the 10 regions and is expected to lead to the setting up of a National Document Expertise Centre in Accra for the training of all immigration officers and personnel of other security agencies to improve their skills and empower them to meet new challenges.
Speaking at the closing of a three-day training workshop for immigration officers at Navrongo in the Kassena Nankena East District, the Upper East Regional Director of Immigration, Mr Peter Defie, charged personnel of the service to be more vigilant and look out for people who enter the country to perpetuate all sorts of crime.
The District Chief Executive, Mr Emmanuel Andema, expressed the hope that the training programme would impart to the officers the ability to gather intelligence to detect fraudulent documents that were sometimes used by travellers to gain entry into the country.
He also urged the officers to collaborate with other security agencies to enhance national security.
Mr Andema called on the officers to be alert and report all cases suspected to be H1N1 influenza to the health authorities for the patients to be kept under surveillance and treated.
“There is the need for us at the periphery to be extra alert and report or detain anybody suspected to be showing signs and symptoms of the disease for the attention of the relevant authorities. Let us encourage travellers to keep abreast of the basic preventive measures of the disease, as well as the signs and symptoms,” he advised.
He expressed concern at the increasing rate of HIV/AIDS in the district, and called for attitudinal and behavioural change.
Quoting statistics from the War Memorial Hospital, Mr Andema said tests carried out on 320 persons during the first quarter of this year, showed that 90 of them were HIV and Hepatitis B positive as compared to the 17 people who came out positive from the 242 people tested for the same disease last year.
He said all these cases were people within the productive age bracket of 15 and 44. He, therefore, solicited the support of the officers some of whom lived within the community to assist in the crusade to curtail the problem.
“Let us try to change our lifestyles by staying away from acts that have the tendency of exposing us to the ugly face of the disease. Our attitudes must change if we want to shape a better future for our youth, as well as mother Ghana,” the DCE stated.
The leader of the seven-member team of facilitators, Deputy Superintendent of Immigration, Mr Kwabena Somuah Amponsah, said the officers were trained in how to look out for enhanced security features in documents, passenger assessment, impostor detection, document examination and the identification of the new birth certificate and the national identity card.