Latest on robbery at Kumasi forex bureau
Disaster…70 feared drowned in Volta Lake
Boakye-Djan denies bribe allegation
Ex-AFRC member speaks…Demands graves of Acheampong, Afrifa, Akuffo, others from Baah
Acheamfuor.
The Guide
June 4 under fire…PV Obeng, Tsikata accused
June 4 petrol time-bomb
Both the Ghanaian Times and the Daily Graphic give an update on the robbery at a forex bureau in Kumasi on their front pages. While the Times headline reads: " Student pleads guilty…One more person arrested, the Graphic says: "Another person arrested.
The Times reports that Frederick Kwadwo Oteng, the surviving partner in the robbery of a Kumasi forex bureau, who yesterday pleaded guilty to the offence before a Kumasi Circuit Tribunal, has been remanded in custody for a week.
The Graphic account on the other hand, says one more person believed to be involved in the armed robbery at a forex bureau in Kumasi at the weekend, has been arrested. Latest reports, according to the Times, say that one more person believed to be the taxi driver who drove the two students from Nkawkaw in the Eastern Region to Kumasi for the operation, has been arrested b y the police in connection with the robbery.
The paper says the Railways Police handling the case would not name the suspect. Both papers quote the Railways Police in Kumasi as saying the suspect was arrested at Nkawkaw on Saturday and sent to Kumasi.
The Times says, Oteng, 18 and Amoako, both students of the St Peter’s Secondary School at Nkwatia-Kwahu, on Friday, robbed the Madusek Forex Bureau in Kumasi at gun point but were subsequently arrested by a mob. While Amoako was lynched, Oteng survived the beatings and was handed over to the police.
The Graphic says meanwhile one of the suspects from St Peter’s Secondary School at Nkwatia, who attempted to rob the forex bureau at Adum, Kumasi, has been remanded in police custody by a Kumasi Circuit Tribunal chaired by Mr Joseph Abanga.
The paper says the student, Master Frederick Kwadwo Oteng, 18, who survived severe beatings by a mob, will re-appear before the tribunal on June 14.
In another front page story,. The Graphic reports that about 79 people are feared drowned in the Volta Lake following a boat disaster last Friday. The paper says the boat, which was carrying about 90 passengers from Kete-Krachi to Tapa-Abotoase in the Volta Region, sank about two nautical miles from Tapa Abotoase.
The boat was said to be carrying 150,000 tubers of yam, 300 bags of groundnut, 27 bags of gari, 10 bags of beans, five cows and 16 big baskets of smoked fish.
The Graphic quotes Nana Ogrohwe Anyenam Boateng II, Paramount Chief of the Tapa Traditional Area as disclosing this at Ho yesterday.
According to him, 25 passengers managed to swim to safety while two women were rescued later, bringing the number of survivors to 27.
He said that all the rest are feared dead or missing. Nana Boateng, a retired Naval Lieutenant, said the owner of the boat whose name was given only as Quarcoo, reported the incident to the Assembly Member for the area, Mr A.K. Nyame and the police at Tapa-Abotoase, at about 5.30 p.m. on June 4. Nana Boateng called on the Ministry of Roads and Transport to institute measures to check private boat operators on the Volta Lake.
The Graphic recalls that in April 1995, 100 passengers drowned in the Volta Lake when the boat on which they travelling from Kpando-Torkor in the Volta Region to Amankwa Tono in the Eastern Region,capsized. It says in August 1994, another 60 passengers died in a similar incident on the Lake.
GRi../
In a front page story, the Crusading Guide says the former second-in-command of the erstwhilArmed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC), Major Kojo Boakye-Djan, has described as ‘ridiculous’ an allegation that he and other members of the AFRC, received part of a loan contracted by the defunct People’s National Party (PNP) government led by the late president Hilla Limann.
Major Boakye-Djan is reported to have debunked the allegation in an interview with the
London-based "African Interpreter", (a journal on African and Arab Affairs), way back in 1987.
"This allegation and the circumstances under which it was made are again so ridiculous that if it is
all that is available to destroy me, then I can only invite you to accept its use as one more evidence
of my incorruptibility and that of my former colleagues in the AFRC", he is reported as saying.
The Crusading Guide says Major Boakye-Djan asserted that the allegation was a confession of a man
under detention and a Chairman of a party that had just been overthrown by those extracting the
confession. (He was referring to the late Nana Okutwer Bekoe, the then Chairman of the PNP).
GRi
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The Independent says as Ghana continues to grapple with the traumatic and heady event of June
4, 1979, one of the architects has spoken on a number of issues bordering on the event.
The paper in a lead story, says former member of the erstwhile Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC),
Sergeant Peter Azongo Tasiri is reported as saying that Captain Baah Acheamfuor, another
member of the AFRC, knows the location of the graves of those executed.
According to Sgt. Tasiri, Captain Baah Acheamfuor would know where the bodies of three heads of state and other Officers were buried since he led the burial team to Nsawam.
"He would know who is lying where and in what type of grave", he is quoted as saying. Captain Baah Acheamfuor is said to have denied on radio programme that he knows where the bodies are.
GRi../
The Guide in a front page banner headline story, says the more President J.J. Rawlings sees the
celebration of the June 4 Uprising as an indispensable part of his life, the more unsavoury
revelations that come out of that era.
The paper says last Thursday, June 3, various allegations and revelations were made on an Accra radio station, that brought into the limelight certain personalities who have never been linked to the ‘controversial’ June 4.
It names Mr P.V. Obeng, member of the erstwhile PNDC and former Presidential Adviser on Governmental Affairs, Captain Kojo Tsikata (rtd), a PNDC member and a former national security boss and Lt-General
Arnold Quainoo, also a member of the PNDC.
The Guide reports Sgt Peter Tasiri, a member of the defunct Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) as saying the three men and Flt-Lt Jerry Rawlings regularly met and discussed issues secretly without the knowledge of the AFRC.
The paper says these disclosures came out when an Accra Radio Station "Choice FM", discussed the
issue of the June 4 celebration. Sgt Tasiri, the paper says, mentioned those names in response to an allegation made by another member of the AFRC, Major Baah Acheamfuor who had stated that Generals Afrifa, Acheampong, Akuffo and others, who were executed in the second batch of Killings, met their fate on what he described as the decision of the ‘Dzelukope Mafia’ and Rawlings.
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The Statesman says the Trade Union Congress (TUC) is to meet today over the June 4 package
handed over to the people of Ghana in the form of a 15 % hike in the prices of petroleum products.
The paper in a lead story, says the surprise increases which have resulted in a 10 % rise in transport fares, have already been criticised by the NPP as illegal and unrealistic, while the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT) has described it as a ‘‘time-bomb whose explosive effects will be too deadly to contain’’.
The Statesman says barely a week after the dramatic and sharp increases in water tariffs, the Bulk Oil Storage and Transportation Company Limited (BOST), a government agency, in a move contradictory to the government’s public pronouncements about seeking the people’s welfare, announced the increases in total disregard for the economic plight of the ordinary Ghanaian.
According to the paper, the increases show yet another betrayal of trust on the part of the government which, in anticipation of the predicted steep rise in prices of crude oil before the 1991 Gulf War, promised to peg future local petroleum prices to international crude oil prices.
The Statesman says even though the period between 1991 and 1999 has witnessed a sharp decline in crude oil prices from the $45 per barrel to the current $15 a barrel in the same period there has been a deep increase – more than 16-fold – in the price of petrol in Ghana from 232.60 cedis per gallon in 1991, to the current 3,850 cedis.
GRi../