GRi Press Review
Ghana 10 - 07 - 2001
'Ghana
won't pay debt'
Libyans to
lift oil to Ghana
I'll pay
…says Mallam Isa
Two more
students held over ammo
NDC sues
CHRAJ over Sahara
I will
laugh even at the point of death - Malam Isa
Rawlings
must be free
3 Embassies
squander ¢72 billion
AMA-CCWL
¢22bn contract abrogated
…I cannot
manufacture faults!-Baako
SSB Bank
workers want more salary
'Ghana
won't pay debt'
Ghana will
not pay any debt due the Paris Club of creditors this year, according to a
report by the Daily Graphic.
This will
ensure that funds saved for the period would be channeled to the country's
poverty reduction strategy programme, Mr Peter Harrolds, World Bank Country
Director said but could, however, not tell off-hand the amount involved in an
interview with the paper in Accra on Monday.
Since the
country opted to join the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative, a
number of bilateral debts have been written off. Britain, Spain, France and
recently Italy have announced the cancellation of various debts owed by Ghana.
External debt stock currently stands at approximately $6 billion to both
bilateral and multilateral institutions.
Mr Harrolds,
who was speaking at a workshop organized by the Institute of Economic Affairs
at Akosombo at the weekend said Ghana is to benefit from a $2.2 billion debt
relief following the acceptance of the country's application to join the HIPC.
He said the
decision point of Ghana's application will be reached in December and hopefully
by the end of January 2002, more relief will be granted to the country.
More…/
Libyans to
lift oil to Ghana
The
Government has indicated that no company, either local or foreign, will be
contracted to lift oil from Libya.
The Libyan
Government has already declared its intention to lift the 30,000 barrels of oil
the government has agreed to buy from Libya.
The
Minister of Energy, Mr Albert Kan-Dapaah, told journalists in Accra on Monday
that during discussions between his ministry and its Libyan counterpart, last
month, the Libyans expressed the hope that the cost of lifting the oil will be
acceptable to Ghana.
He said a
technical committee from the two countries is still negotiating the terms of
the supplies but could not tell when the discussions will be finalized for the
lifting to begin.
Mr
Kan-Dapaah said President J.A. Kufuor, during his recent meeting with the
Libyan Leader in Libya, requested 30,000 barrels of oil to supplement what
Ghana is importing from Nigeria.
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I'll pay
…says Mallam Isa
Mallam Ali Yusif
Isa, former Minister of Youth and Sports, on Monday told the fast-track court
that he was fully prepared to pay the missing $46,000 entrusted to him as
winning bonuses of the Ghana Black Stars, saying that he accepts responsibility
for the loss of the money, reports The Ghanaian Times.
Mallam Isa
however, denied stealing it. He was concluding his evidence in the case in which
he has been charged with stealing the amount and fraudulently causing financial
loss to the state.
He pleaded
not guilty and is on a ¢500 million bail with two sureties to be justified.
He told the
court that even though he was not in the position to pay fully, he was prepared
to generate the amount and pay.
According
to him, his decision was due to the fact that the money belonged to the state
and it was the taxpayer's money.
Mallam Isa
stressed that he did not know how the money got lost, apart from the fact that
he kept it in his green suitcase before the Sudan trip on February 23, 2001 but
could not find it when he retrieved the bag on February 28, 2001 after it had
been lost in transit.
More…/
Two more
students held over ammo
Two more
final-year students of Adisadel College, Cape Coast, have been arrested by the
police for their involvement in the theft of 82 packets of live ammunition.
Stephen
Atsu Kudoto, 18 and Selikem Ahiadzro, 19, were arrested here at Cape Coast at the
weekend.
Two of
their colleagues who were arrested last Wednesday, were on Thursday put before
a Sunyani Community tribunal for the offence. They are Donald Chuby Abili, 19
and Kwaw Afebi Yanney, 18.
Ahiadzam
was handed over to the police by her mother, Madam Francisca Quist, while
Kudoto was arrested at Cape Coast.
The police
have mounted a search for a fifth person, John Aboagy Gyimah, 20.
The Cape
Coast Regional Police commander, Mr George Obeng, disclosed these at Cape Coast
on Monday and explained that the five students took advantage of a heavy
downpour in the town and broke into the police armoury at about 12.30 am and
made away with the ammunition.
According
to Mr Obeng, the students hired a taxi to Accra but change their direction to
Sunyani where two of them were arrested at the Providence Lodge.
The two who
were arrested in Sunyani, were transferred to Cape Coast at the weekend, and
all the four were arraigned before a Cape Coast tribunal on Monday.
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NDC sues
CHRAJ over Sahara
The
Chronicle reports that the controversy surrounding the lifting of crude oil
from Nigeria by the Sahara Energy Resources Limited has taken a new dimension. The
National Democratic Congress (NDC) has filed a writ at an Accra High Court
seeking, among other reliefs, an order directing the Commission on Human Rights
and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ), defendants in the suit, to investigate
allegations over the recently concluded agreement between the Nigeria National
Petroleum Company (NNPC) and the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR).
In
particular, the NDC wants the CHRAJ to investigate the role played by Dr.
Charles Wereko-Brobby, Energy Adviser to the government, Hon Kan Dapaah,
Minister of Energy, Dr. K. Nyantakyi, Messrs Goka, Ken Ofori Atta and others
unknown.
Additionally,
the NDC is praying the court for an order directing CHRAJ to investigate who
the owners of Sahara Energy Resources of Nigeria/Ghana are, and the cost to the
Ghanaian consumer and taxpayer of the implementation of the contract.
In an
accompanying statement of claim, the plaintiff party avers that the defendant
is a body established by an Act of Parliament pursuant to Article 216 of the
Constitution, whose functions include the investigations of all instances of
alleged or suspected corruption and the misappropriation of public moneys.
More…/
I will
laugh even at the point of death - Malam Isa
Mallam Ali
Yussif Isa's constant beaming with smiles and laughter nearly put him into
trouble on Monday, when Justice Julius Ansah, the Fast Track High Court judge,
briefly halted proceedings, and issued a stern warning against the accused to
stop laughing while under cross examination.
Before,
Justice Ansah had descended on the accused, his counsel, Mr Ambrose Derry, has
also intervened during the cross-examination and directly put an injunction
against his client, saying "Don't smile and don't laugh again in this
court".
Mr Derry
further apologized to the court, explaining that his client had the habit of
constantly smiling and laughing, at any moment.
Malam Isa,
in reaction to the barrage of warnings from both the judge and his lawyer, told
the court point-blank that smiling and laughing was part and parcel of him and
that even at the point of death he could not stop laughing or smiling.
However,
Justice Julius Ansah, an Appeal Court judge sitting as an additional High Court
judge, made it clear to the accused that he was free to laugh at the point of
his death, but in his court he was ordering him to stop laughing.
The
accused, who had finished his evidence-in-chief, was being cross-examined by
the Director of Public Prosecutions, Mr Osafo Sarpong, over the loss of the
$46,000.
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Rawlings
must be free
A call has
been made for the granting of immunity from prosecution to the former head of state
and immediate past President of the Republic of Ghana, Flt. Lt. Jerry John
Rawlings, according to The Daily Guide.
This is to
act not only as a way of healing the wounds of the past but also to further
enrich and lend substance to the National Reconciliation Process.
Hon. J.H.
Mensah, Member of Parliament (MP) for Sunyani East and Minister for Government
Business made the plea when he spoke in a radio interview in Accra on Monday.
Making a
strong case for Rawlings' immunity from prosecution, Mr Mensah said that
"from political point of view, some of the excesses of the past which
characterized the rule of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) from
June 4, 1979 to September 24, 1979; and from December 31, 1981 to January 7,
1992, were committed without the direct say-so, knowledge or involvement of
Flt. Lt. Jerry John Rawlings.
As a
caveat, Mr Mensah stressed that, Rawlings cannot be totally absolved from blame
and thus plead immunity from prosecution from any atrocities of the past particularly
if strong and credible evidence could be adduced to establish his complicity
with regard to the abduction and murder of the three High Court Judges and a
retired army officer on June 30, 1982.
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3 Embassies
squander ¢72 billion
The Evening
News says an amount of ¢72 billion was misappropriated and embezzled in three
Ghanaian missions abroad between 1996 and 1998.
Information
filtering in from across the borders of the country, according to the paper,
indicates that a total of 30,343,545 CFA was embezzled at the Lome Embassy,
£28,456 in London whilst rent arrears of 17,120,000 CFA could not be accounted
for at the Ghana Mission in Mali.
At the Lome
Mission, an accounts officer misappropriated the said amount and made
under-payments of 80,000 CFA to Ghana between April 1996 and May 1997.
In London,
a local staff at the passport and immigration section in the Mission falsified
and duplicated copies and embezzled revenue amounting to £28,450 between
September 1995 and July 1996.
The Head of
London Mission, between November 1998 and May 1999 increased telephone expenses
in the residency to £5,321.89, which was settled in full by the Mission. Since
the head is entitled to £450 per month, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has to
recover the excess of £2,621.89.
An amount
of 250,000 CFA was overpaid as rehabilitation fee at the Ghana Mission in Burkina
Faso. The bill supporting repayment of rehabilitation of the residence swimming
pool totaled 292,600 CFA and not 542,600 CFA, which was fraudulently posted.
Back home
six institutions have left the Accra International Conference Centre indebted
to the tune of ¢870,315,000.
They are:
Parliament, ¢858,050,000, Panafest Secretariat ¢3,400,000, PAWA ¢3,450,000,
Ministry of Tourism ¢2,900,000, State Protocol Department ¢1,500,000 and
Charismatic Churches ¢1,015,000.
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AMA-CCWL
¢22bn contract abrogated
The
controversial City and Country Waste Limited (CCWL) solid wastes management
contract with the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) has been abrogated.
Sources
close to the AMA and the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development
told The Statesman that the abrogation of the contract was due to the apparent
irregularities in it.
The AMA's 1998
agreement with the company, with an all-NDC board of Directors, gave the CCWL
the monopoly of solid waste management within the city and was guaranteed an
annual payment of over ¢22 billion.
Ironically,
at the time the AMA was entering into the contract with Groupe Chagnon
International of Canada, a co-owner of CCWL, its annual income was only a
little over ¢10 billion. And since the signing of the contract, the AMA has not
been able to fulfill its own part of the contract, leading to intermittent strikes
by the workers of the refuse collection company.
CCWL was
registered as a limited liability company on December 2, 1997 with Groupe
Chagnon and AMA together with some individuals as shareholders. The AMA and
Chagnon each hold 25% shares, while the Ghanaian directors cornered 50%.
The
directors are Nat Nunoo Amarteifio, former AMA Chief Executive, Norman Poliguin
of Chagnon, Fats Nartey of AMA, Edith Haizel of 31st December
Women's Movement, Eddie Annan of Masai, Charles Asare, Director-General of
SSNIT, now on leave and Dr. H. Holdbrook-Smith of Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.
Surprisingly
however, none of the directors made any purchase towards the investment
required to give the company a lift.
The entire fleet of vehicle and equipment were bought with a $14 million
loan from Canada guaranteed by the government of Ghana. The equipment were to
be turned over to the company over a period of time.
These
anomalies sparked off debates between the then Majority NDC and the NPP in
Parliament.
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…I cannot
manufacture faults! …Baako
The
Journalist of the Year 1999, Kweku Baako Jnr. has stated that until the Kufuor
Administration provides him with sufficient basis to attack it, he would not
manufacture stories for that purpose.
Speaking at
a workshop on leadership organized by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA),
Kweku Baako, Editor-in-Chief of The Crusading Guide, recalled that Ghanaians
over the past 19 years had fought for a change for the better.
He added
that if this fight for change has turned into a reality there was the need to
consolidate it.
"We
battled for a certain change, we haven't consolidated the change, and some
people want us to begin battling the change", Baako said in reaction to
the view from certain quarters that the private press was not being critical of
the NPP government.
The 1999
Journalist of the Year was quick to point out that if the Kufuor Administration
began to indulge in human rights abuses, corruption and other vices contrary to
the dictates of the Constitution, they (NPP Govt) would be given the same
dosage of lashes as meted out to the past National Democratic Congress (NDC)
government.
"If a
President asks a soldier to overturn a taxi I would attack him, if a young boy
is abducted by Castle Security and given what a First Lady would call a mere
identification hair cut, I would take them on. I am saying that those things
are not happening now so why should I manufacture them", Baako queried.
He
submitted that he does not support the Highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC)
initiative ideologically. "I don't support IMF, World Bank policies but it
is a government which has won the people's mandate which has decided to go for
HIPC. It is a policy option so let us allow it. If it doesn't succeed after 4
years we would have a campaign material against them," Baako rationalized.
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SSB Bank
workers want more salary
Workers of
SSB Bank Limited have embarked on an indefinite strike to back demands for salary
increases after negotiations between them and management stalled, a source
close to the workers told the Ghana News Agency on Friday.
The Ghana
Palaver says senior staff members, working at a slow pace, served the long
queue of customers.
The source
who pleaded for anonymity said the strike was sparked off by management's
refusal to adhere to an agreed formula, permitting adjustment of salaries based
on the annual performance of the bank.
According
to the formula, the workers were to enjoy a 75 per cent increase in salaries
for this year, which management is reluctant to implement, saying the agreement
no longer holds because it was done to achieve a specific target, which has now
been met.
The source
said the agreement did not state any timeframe and that the workers found the
management's position rather strange since the formula had been in use for the
last four years.
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