Issue of flagbearer for NDC
is premature - Spio-Garbrah
Ghana and US to launch
space satellite
Households in
Savelugu/Nanton District run out of food
Add value to shelf life of
plantain, banana - Minister urges researchers
Concerned
citizens appeal for rehabilitation of market
Issue of flagbearer for
NDC is premature - Spio-Garbrah
Ankaful (Central Region) 03 April 2001
Mr Ekwow Spio-Garbrah, former Minister of Education, on Sunday stated that the issue of a flagbearer to lead the NDC in the next elections is "premature" and is therefore not the preoccupation of the party now.
What the party is currently concerned with is how to effectively re-organise its structures and operations to make it more formidable to enable it to wrest back power from the NPP in the next elections, Mr Spio-Garbrah told newsmen during a meeting between the party's national reconstruction committee and functionaries on the one hand, and supporters of the party in the Central Region on the other hand at Ankaful, near Cape Coast.
The meeting formed part of the committee's nation-wide tour to solicit the views of the rank and file of the party's membership to enhance its re-organisational strategies.
According to the former minister, everybody seems to want to know who the party's flagbearer would be but pointed out that that issue would only be deliberated upon at the party's congress in two or three years' time and that this year's congress would deal mainly with organisational matters.
Mr. Spio-Garbrah hinted that one of the major issues of concern to the committee is how to favourably court the media as a means of ensuring that the views of the party are carried "promptly and accurately to inspire its members", especially in the wake of the negative publicity the party is having now.
He said this aspect is very crucial since, according to him, a majority of the media did not help the party during the last elections.
He said the party was confident of winning back power because it is still the most popular and largest party in the country with the support of about half the nation's population.
According to him, the NDC, which has won two elections, is leading the NPP, and has two points on the "political league table" while the NPP has just one point and that no member of the NDC intends defecting to the NPP just because it happens to be in power now.
The former minister, however, noted that the NDC flagbearer for the next elections would need more time to prepare to enable the party to win massively.
He conceded that the party's flagbearer in the last elections "did not do well" because he did not have enough time to prepare, adding that whereas Professor John Atta Mills was nominated in April and had just about nine months to campaign, the NPP flagbearer had been campaigning "in one way or another since 1992".
Mr Spio-Garbrah re-echoed his concern about what he termed the harassment of NDC officials and functionaries, adding that there are more appropriate ways to summon any of such officials wanted in connection with an issue than by radio announcements.
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Ghana and US to launch
space satellite
Accra (Greater Accra) 03 April 2001
Ms Kathryn Dee Robinson, US Ambassador to Ghana on Monday said the United States Armed Forces and their Ghanaian counterparts are collaborating to launch a space satellite on May 19.
She has therefore called on the scientific community to help monitor the launch, whose second stage would be observed off the coast of Ghana.
Ms Robinson made the appeal when she paid a courtesy call on the Minister of Environment, Science and Technology, Prof. Dominic Fobih in Accra.
She said the Delta II rocket will be launched from Florida in the USA while the second and third stages will occur in space above a point, four degrees west of the equator, approximately 200 miles off the coast of Ghana.
" The US government is requesting the assistance of the Ghana Navy and the scientific community to help monitor the launch, especially in its sequential stages", she said.
Ambassador Robinson also appealed to Prof. Fobih to consider tackling environmental issues from the regional perspective.
"You need to collaborate with all the countries within the sub-region in tackling environmental issues such as desertification, environmental degradation and coastal erosion", she stressed.
Ms Robinson said her government is ready to help private enterprises in the area of tree cropping to reduce the effects of climate change and its consequences.
Prof. Fobih said although his ministry does not deal directly with the US Embassy, there are a lot of institutions under his ministry that continually receive support from the US government.
He mentioned the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, as some of them.
The minister called on the US to help sensitise Ghanaians on environmental issues and the concerns they raise for the world.
He said Ghana also needs US assistance to promote information technology at all levels of the country's development.
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Households in
Savelugu/Nanton District run out of food
Savelugu (Northern Region) 03 April 2001
The Northern Regional Minister, Mr Ben Salifu has expressed concern about reports that about 88 per cent of households in the Savelugu/Nanton District run out of food barely four months after harvest.
This high level of food insecurity in the district is unacceptable and everything possible must be done to reverse the situation, the Regional Minister said in a speech read for him at the launch of a nutrition and food security research project at Savelugu on Monday.
UNICEF is sponsoring the research to be undertaken by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) based in the United States in collaboration with Food and Nutrition Security Unit (FNSU) of the University for Development Studies (UDS), Tamale, and Cornell University in the US.
Mr Salifu said the Northern Region is an agricultural area where the people depend largely on farming for livelihood but regretted that the lack of scientific farming methods, access to credit and modern farming machinery, have impoverished most farmers.
He pledged the government's support for such research work that would lead to the gathering of data to provide scientific inputs for development.
The Rev Professor Saa Dittoh, Co-ordinator of the Food and Nutrition Security Unit of UDS and Principal Investigator of the research project, said while people are scared about malaria and HIV/AIDS, only a few know that malnutrition is "a bigger killer and destroyer".
"Even when malnutrition does not kill outright, it makes people become liabilities while others are unable to give of their best."
He said a country that is full of human liabilities and people who could otherwise have been very productive, cannot talk of development.
He called on traditional rulers in the region to review the social structures of the people and do away with those aspects that cause food insecurity.
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Add value to shelf life of
plantain, banana - Minister urges researchers
Accra (Greater Accra) 03 April 2001
Professor Dominic Fobih, Minister of Environment, Science and Technology on Monday urged research scientists to add value to the shelf life of plantain, banana and other agricultural produce to spur farmers to increase productivity.
"Research scientists should come out with modern technological methods of farming especially in the provision of planting materials to encourage farmers to grow more," he said.
Prof. Fobih said this at the opening of a three-day regional meeting of Producers of Plantain and Banana Network for West and Central Africa (MUSACO) in Accra.
The MUSACO Network involves 12 countries including Ghana, Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Cote d'Ivoire and DR. Congo.
The others are Gabon, Guinea, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Senegal and Sierra Leone.
The Network ensures an increase in the production of banana and plantain grown on smallholdings for both domestic consumption and export.
Prof. Fobih tasked the researchers to find solution to problems associated with the export of banana and plantain, lodging of plants during storms and promotion of dwarf varieties that can satisfy the demand of the private investor.
He said it is the aim of his ministry to promote collaboration between the private sector and research institutions for the benefit of farmers.
Prof. W. S. Alhassan, Director General of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) said research in the plantain and banana species started over ten years ago when the Black-sigatoka disease infected the crops.
He said CSIR, through the assistance of donor agencies, has successfully released black-sigatoka resistant varieties to farmers for adoption.
Prof. Alhassan said two-thirds of the world's production of plantain, amounting to about ten million tonnes, is produced in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly in West and Central Africa.
Prof. Alfred Oteng Yeboah, Deputy Director General of CSIR in-charge of Environment and Health, who chaired the session identified some of the problems associated with plantain production as susceptibility to nematodes, virus diseases such as black sigatoka and banana streak virus.
He urged the scientists to help solve some of the problems facing the industry.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 03 April 2001
The Minister of Energy Mr Albert Kan-Dapaah on Monday dissolved the Board of the Volta River Authority (VRA) and promised the appointment of a new one shortly.
In an interview, Mr Kan-Dapaah told the Ghana News Agency: "We have taken such an action and I would be coming out with a statement on the matter sometime today."
He did not state what precipitated the dissolution, but it is believed to be part of moves to re-organise the nation's main energy provider to fall in line with general energy aspirations.
Mr Erasmus Kalitsi, one-time Chief Executive of VRA is the current chairman of the board, which has been in place for about four years.
Officials at VRA could not confirm the minister's action but said it was normal practice to change non-institutional members of the board.
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Concerned
citizens appeal for rehabilitation of market
Kyirenkwanta (Central
Region) 03 April 2001
A group of concerned
citizens from the two Gomoa traditional areas; Akyempim and Ajumako, on Sunday
appealed to the government to rehabilitate the Kyirenkwanta Central Market, to
serve the needs of farmers, fishermen, traders and other citizens.
The market, which was
established during the Busia regime, to serve the people of the two traditional
areas, has been neglected for nearly 30 years.
Speaking to newsmen
after inspecting the abandoned market, a spokesman for the group, Rev Justice
Ansah, said the neglect has adversely affected the operations traders as well
as farmers and fishermen, in the District.
He said as a result,
farmers in the district have over the years been compelled to send their produce
for sale either to Kasoa or Mankessim, at exorbitant freight charges, thus
cutting down their profit margins.
Rev Ansah said the
rehabilitation of the market would not only help resolve the marketing problem
facing farmers and fishermen, in the district, but also generate additional
revenue to supplement the efforts of the District Assembly, to implement its
development programmes.
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