Row over role of nominees
Another fuel attendant killed
What’s new fuel price?
President to release Cabinet list today
Kufuor to probe TOR, GNPC, SSNIT
Mills chairs NDC ‘come-back’ meeting
The new IGP is….
NDC was instrument of Force
NDC-Dominated HAJJ committee blows billions
Criminal libel to go
NDC leaves 6 trillion cedis debt
Big row over sale of cars
Kufuor Fumbles
Row over role of nominees
The Daily Graphic in a front-page report says the issue of whether nominees for ministerial positions should assume some responsibilities of substantive ministers generated debate between the majority and minority at yesterday’s proceedings in Parliament.
Whilst the majority side saw nothing wrong with it and explained that the nominees are representatives of the President who made the nomination, the minority was of the view that it is unconstitutional and must be stopped.
The minority argued that the nominees are yet to be vetted by the Appointment Committee for approval before they can perform duties reserved for ministers.
The issue came up after the Speaker, Mr Peter Ala Adjetey, read a letter from the Office of the President, informing the House about the President’s nomination of five persons for ministerial positions.
As soon as the Speaker told the House that the nominees would be considered by the Appointment Committee, Mr Isaac Adjei-Mensah Deputy Minority Leader, expressed the minority’s dissatisfaction with the appearance of the nominees at state functions which were duly covered by the media.
He said it was unconstitutional for the nominees to do so because their nominations were yet to be approved by the House to enable them perform state functions.
The Deputy Minority Leader supported his argument by saying that in 1997, continuing ministers were even not allowed to enter the chamber of the House.
He said what must be done now is for the chief directors of the various ministries to perform state functions until such time that the nominees would be vetted and approved by he House.
Nana Akufo-Addo, (NPP, Abuakwa) a nominee, said the nominees are representatives of the President and there is nothing wrong with what they have been doing.
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Another fuel attendant killed
The Graphic in another front-page capture says a 26-year old male fuel attendant on Wednesday became the second victim, within four days, of what seems to be an unbecoming ruthless killing by armed robbers who attack filling stations in the capital.
The deceased, Haruna Abass, was killed by a shot fired indiscriminately by one of the seven armed robbers who stormed the Total Filling station at APC, Abeka, a suburb of Accra.
Two men who were repairing a broken down taxi parked at the filling station allegedly sustained gunshot wounds in the head and leg and were rushed to the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in Accra for treatment.
After collecting Spacefon Snap cards, Ghana Telecom phone cards and an unspecified amount of money from the attendants, the robbers, who came to the station on foot, bolted in a Mazda Saloon car they seized from a pastor who pulled up at the station for refuelling.
The first victim, a female, was shot at the Unipetrol Filling Station at Legon last Sunday.
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What’s new fuel price?
The Ghanaian Times report of high-level discussions going on between senior officials of the Ministry of Mines and Energy and government advisers to come up with an appropriate price level for petroleum products.
Sources close to the meeting told he Ghana News Agency (GNA) that a proposal on the issue would be presented to President John Agyekum Kufuor by today.
The meeting is also looking at other petroleum tax options to make up for losses incurred in the last 12 months and beyond.
“All I can tell you is that there will be price increases but they will not come at a go,” the source said.
It declined to state the percentage increase, saying that the option would be left for the President.”
“We are going to give the President options to choose from. There are a lot of factors involved. First, you have to look at what inputs to make so that you can recover your costs. You also understand that petroleum prices have inflationary pressures on the economy… hence you have to give the President the options first on how to recover the costs.” A gallon of petrol is currently selling at ø6,400.
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President to release Cabinet list today
President John Agyekum Kufuor will make known the full complement of the Cabinet by the end of this week.
“The list will be completed this week to enable Parliament consider the nominees,” said Ms Elizabeth Ohene, Presidential Advisor on Public Affairs on Wednesday.
The President has so far made 12 nominations for some key ministries are outstanding.
These are Health, Education, Communications, Works and Housing, Sports, Mines and Energy, Tourism, and Employment and Social Welfare.
Those already nominated are Dr Kwame Addo Kufuor, Defence, Mr Yaw Osafo-Marfo Finance, and Dr Kofi Apraku, Trade and Industry.
Others are Alhaji Malik Yakubu Alhassan, Interior, Mrs Gladys Asmah, Women Affairs, Mr Kwadwo Baah Wiredu, Local Government and Rural Development, Nana Akufo Addo, Attorney General and Minister of Justice and Mr Hackman Owusu-Agyeman, Foreign Affairs.
The rest are Major Courage Quarshigah (rtd), Food and agriculture Mr J.H. Mensah Parliamentary Affairs, Dr Kwaku Afriyie, Lands and Forestry, and Dr Dominic Fobih, Environment, Science and Technology.
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Kufuor to probe TOR, GNPC, SSNIT
The Dispatch says it can, based on credible evidence available, reveal that the administration of President John Agyekum Kufuor is putting in place machinery to, along the lines of probity and accountability, investigate various allegations of impropriety at four state institutions.
They are Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC); Tema Oil Refinery (TOR; Social Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) and the Bulk Oil and Storage Transport (BOST).
It said its enquiries have revealed that one of the main thrusts of the investigations is to determine the truth in allegations that made against a number of institutions and organisations, including the four.
In GNPC, it is expected that the probe will determine the authenticity of claims that the activities of the corporation has been a huge drain on the economy.
Dr Kwesi Botchway, the former Finance Minister, sighted the GNPC's huge financial drain which ex-President Rawlings failed to check as one of his main reasons for leaving the NDC government, and some World Bank and IMF reports expressed misgivings about the huge sum of monies the government was placing at the disposal of the firm.
The probe into SSNIT would be perhaps, one of the easiest, given the fact that the intense media and public outcry against some allegations of malfeasance had been proven credible. The manner in which certain SSNIT properties were purchased by a select few could be a pointer to the nature of those Ghanaians.
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Mills chairs NDC ‘come-back’ meeting
The top hierarchy of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), according to 'The Chronicle', on Thursday met in Accra to discuss steps towards reorganising the party after it suffered its first ever defeat in last year’s Presidential and Parliamentary elections.
The meeting, which lasted for three and a half hours, was chaired by Professor Evans Atta Mills, ex-vice President of Ghana.
Even though it wasn’t opened to the press, the paper gathered that top on the agenda was how to woo back Goosie Tanoh’s Reform boys into the ‘Progressive Alliance’.
A credible source that confirmed this later in a discussion told the Chronicle that the NDC believes the Reform boys were the cause of their defeat. They were therefore prepared to do everything to get Goosie and his men back to their fold.
At the meeting it was conceded by the NDC top brass that it would not be easy getting back those who deserted the Progressive Alliance, but they were going to begin the process at the ward levels, then to the constituencies and ultimately moving it to the national front.
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…The new IGP is….
The Chronicle said that top police officers it interviewed in Accra voted overwhelmingly for the head of the Ghana Police College, Deputy Commissioner of Police Mr Kwesi Acheampong as a replacement for Mr Peter Tinganaba Nanfuri, who is on his way out.
Out of fifteen top officers who were interviewed, 19 supported Mr Kwesi Acheampong, three went to Owusu Poku, Director of the Passports and two for Owusu Nsiah, a long serving police officer. None supported Johnson Abudu, who is the operational commander at the Police Headquarters.
Surprisingly Mr W.K Abuah, Commissioner (CID) and substantive Director of Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) did not receive mention. He is as much a Rawlings/Konadu loyalist as Tinganaba Nanafuri, who has received some support from politicians like madam Hawa Yakubu.
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NDC was instrument of Force
The NPP Member of Parliament for Bawku Central, Hon. Hawa Yakubu, has described the out-gone NDC as an instrument of force that did not allow people, including ministers to think freely, 'The Guide' reported.
She noted that with the exit of the party, there has been an atmosphere of fresh air in the country and that people can now worship their natural God and not persons.
Hon. Yakubu made these observations on a local Accra radio station on Thursday.
According to her the NDC will not survive for four years since the intrigues and who they (NDC) were really hanging on were not natural.
“They were just hanging on artificially and using state resources and intimidation and they will crumble naturally”, she said.
Hon Yakubu maintained that even NDC ministers could not enjoy their legally or otherwise acquired property because they felt intimidated. She pointed out that even most NDC ministers were supporting the NPP, stressing that the other opposition parties were instrumental in the NPP’s victory.
Touching on the 31st December Women’s Movement (31st DWM), she held that it did not represent the greater interest of Ghanaian women, stressing that the Movement had its own agenda, and so she did not believe in it. And this belief was not held by her alone but by people like the former Member of Parliament Vida Yeboah.
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NDC-Dominated HAJJ committee blows billions
The Free Press writes that the NDC and its affiliates really milked Ghana so dry that the plea of its General Secretary, Alhaji Huudu Yahaya last Friday, that the character of the transition should not be made a “post military coup event of witch-hunting, reprisals and recriminations, should totally be ignored with the contempt it deserves.
It said the Hajj Committee, which was dominated by NDC activists is in an unaccountable debt of 120,000 dollars (about 840 million cedis).
As a result of this and the danger it poses to future Muslim pilgrims, Alhaji Maiga, the national chairman of the NPP-Nasara club, has suggested that the Hajj Committee should not be dissolved as being demanded by pro-NDC camouflaged agitators. Instead, he called for an investigative committee to be instituted comprising NPP elements to probe the circumstances that led to this colossal debt.
While investigation is on-going, a sub-Hajj Committee of very eminent Muslims should be set up to manage Hajj pilgrimages in the country because, according to Alhaji Maiga, “there is evidence of international exploitation of the Hajj Committee by pro-external factors in connivance with the NDC dominated Hajj Committee”.
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Criminal libel to go
The Accra Mail reports that President Kufuor has given the first tentative brush strokes about his government’s intention of scrapping those aspects of the Criminal Code that criminalise free expression.
The President made this known to journalists on Saturday when he interacted with them at a reception in the resort town of Ada.
President Kufuor in a remarkable expression of solidarity with the media, made a wide detour on his way from Lome, where he attended President Eyadema’s 35th Anniversary of being in office, to be with the Journalists.
He was met on arrival by the President of the West African Journalists Association (WAJA), Kabral Blay Amihere and Dr Sam Jonah, Chief Executive Officer of Ashanti Goldfields Company (AGC), who hosted the reception.
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NDC leaves 6 trillion cedis debt
The task of reviving the economy is bound to be more Herculean following the discovery of an internal debt of 6 trillion cedis and a worsening of the external debt by $200 million, reports the Weekend Statesman.
Making the revelation to a stunned group at the State House last Tuesday, the Minister-designate of Finance, Yaw Osafo-Maafo, said that 6 trillion cedis represents a whopping 20% of Ghana’s GDP!
He described the debts as “unusual” and the financial situation as “dangerous.” Nevertheless, he said, the Kufuor administration will present its first budget in March.
He appealed to the Japanese Ambassador, Hiromu Nitta, who had called on President J.A. Kufuor, to release a planned $80m to assist in the process of economic recovery.
Stressing the gravity of the situation, Minister of Trade and Industries-designate, Dr Kofi Apraku, called for assistance to the NPP government to enable it to address a problem that is not its making but merely inherited.
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Big row over sale of cars
Emerging details about the sale of vehicles to departing NDC officials point to a clear move to short change the Ghanaian taxpayer through under-valuation, says the Statesman said,.
Investigations by the paper revealed gross abuse of the existing regulations that give departing senior government officials the option to buy their official vehicles, which are supposed to be saloon cars and not cross-country vehicles.
But while some NDC officials took away cross-country vehicles, others left with a multiple of cars. In most cases, the cars were almost new and did not qualify for sale under the existing regulations, which specify that such cars should be at least two years old.
The most common abuse, if not a criminal one, was the under-valuation of all the vehicles taken away, an act traced to the doorstep of former Chief of Staff, Ato Dadzie.
While the official valuer, F.K. Allotey, priced the vehicles he worked on for between 30m cedis and 80m cedis, he was pressurised to drastically reduce his figures so low that the vehicle were eventually sold at ridiculously low prices ranging from 3m cedis to 8m cedis!!
A VW Passat salon, with chassis number WVWZZZ 3BWE 161546, manufactured in 1999, was valued at 41,037,490 cedis by Mr. Allotey but eventually sold for 7.5m cedis to one of the beneficiaries.
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Kufuor Fumbles
The Ghanaian Democrat writes that President J.A. Kufuor has not been in office for more than ten days but he is already feeling the heat of that office.
It states that a week after he was sworn in as the President, he took his first faulty step into the presidency when he decided to pay a visit to a new found ally, President Gnassingbe Eyadema of Togo, for obvious reasons.
The official reason given for his first trip outside Ghana was that because President Eyadema accepted to attend Mr. Kufuor’s inauguration at a very short notice it was only proper that the Ghanaian President reciprocate by accepting to be the guest of the Togolese strongman on the occasion of the 34th anniversary of the coup that brought him to power.
"But Ghanaians are no fools. They can read in between the lines and form their own opinion. If even they voted for Mr. Kufuor they are not people to be taken for a ride.
That is why five days after the controversial trip many Ghanaians who phoned in to contribute to various radio programmes on the matter are questioning the propriety of that trip", it said.
What has beaten the imagination of many Ghanaians is, why should President Kufuor who has never relented in his criticism of the celebration of June 4 Uprising and the 31st December Revolution by the former President, Flt. Lt. J.J. Rawlings, now agree to join one of the first coup makers on the continent.
"They can now see the hypocrisy of President Kufuor and the NPP in condemning former President Rawlings at home for celebrating two great occasions that have helped to shape the destiny of this country for good in the last 20 years while hailing a similar occasion in neighbouring Togo and even agreeing to receive the highest Togolese honour on that occasion", the paper said.
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