GRi Press Review
Ghana 01 - 06 - 2001
NDC members
boycott debate on Public Holidays Bill
I only
fired two shots - Wudah
At the
Stadium probe - Caught Red-handed!
Palaver
editor admits his ignorance
'Rebellion'
within CSA
La Palm
Hotel under BNI siege
Tension at
GCB over ¢24 billion
ADF gives
Ghana $19 million for rice project
NDC to mark
June 4
Don't
privatise water sector
NDC members
boycott debate on Public Holidays Bill
The
majority of NDC members of Parliament, for the second time running, boycotted
the debate on the Public Holidays (Amendment) Bill, which is before the House, reports
the Daily Graphic.
Last
Wednesday, most of the NDC MPs walked out as soon as the bill was mentioned by
the First Deputy Speaker, Mr Freddie Blay, who was in the chair.
The bill
seeks to abolish the celebration of June 4 as a public holiday but the NDC has
expressed its dissatisfaction at the amendment.
Papa
Owusu-Ankomah, Deputy Majority Leader, said by their actions, the NDC members
were making the work of Parliament very difficult and suggested that the
Minority should not be allowed to hold Parliament hostage.
He
questioned why the Minority Chief Whip gave tacit support to NDC members who
walked out "to chat and drink tea in the lobby when there is a serious
business to be conducted.
He further
drew the attention of the Speaker to the fact that taking tea in the lobby of
the chamber constituted a deliberate attempt to stall the business of the
House.
Mr S.K.
Boafo, MP for Subin and Ashanti Regional Minister, also criticized the Minority
Chief Whip, Mr Doe Adjaho, for giving tacit support to what the NDC members were
doing.
The
Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Kwamena Bartels, said in a contribution that
since most of the NDC members were taking tea in the adjoining lobby of the
chamber, it was incumbent upon Mr Doe Adjaho to bring them back into the
chamber.
When Mr
Adjaho caught the eyes of the Speaker, he challenged the procedure adopted for
the debate on the bill.
His comment
brought a sharp disagreement between him and Mr Blay, forcing Papa
Owusu-Ankomah to remind Mr Adjaho to be calm and respect the chair.
More…/
I only
fired two shots - Wudah
General
Constable Godwin Wudah of the Police Striking Force and one of the policemen
involved in the firing that led to the Accra Stadium disaster on Thursday told
the presidential Commission probing the issue that even though a number of
ammunitions were fired on May 9, he only shot two canisters of rubber bullets
out of a total number of five given him at the armoury.
While defending his evidence, General constable Wudah also
told the commission that the report of an internal Police inquiry, which
indicated his admission of using all five shots of ammunition, was
"untrue."
Giving
evidence before the commission on Thursday, General Constable Wudah, who until
last November 17, was a bodyguard of former Youth and Sports Minister, Mr E.T.
Mensah, also said he received five canisters of rubber bullets and not two
canisters of tear gas and three rubber bullets as contained in the arms and
ammunitions register at the Central Armoury and the police report.
Asked if he
returned all remaining ammunition to the armoury after the incident, General
Constable Wudah said even though he tried to return them he was told to wait
for all the others to report before entering them in the register.
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At the
Stadium probe - Caught red-handed!
The Daily
Guide writes that after weeks of playing verbal hide-and-seek over which police
commander actually gave the fatal order to fire volleys of teargas, the Stadium
Probe Commission has finally been told the names of the officers directly
involved.
The
policemen who ordered the firing of canisters of tear gas that resulted in the
death of 126 Ghanaians at the Accra Sports Stadium, on Wednesday, may 9, have
been identified as Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP), Edward Faakye Kumi
and ASP John Naami.
The
identification was made by Mr Abdul Azziz Harruna, Chairman of the
"Musical O" sub-committee of Accra Hearts of Oak football club at
Thursday's sitting of the five-member Presidential Commission probing the
tragedy, from a photograph presented to him by the Commission. He was giving
evidence before the Commission of the traumatic disaster he experienced when
volleys of teargas were pumped unto fleeing spectators that "Black
Wednesday."
He told the
committee that when he recognised the danger posed by the volleys of teargas being fired, he saw Hearts
of Oak supporters begging the police to halt the firing but to no avail.
According
to him, the police ignored the pleas and rather continued to spray canisters of
tear gas unto the fleeing and helpless spectators.
ASP Kumi at
that juncture, according to Harruna, came and stood in front of the armed
officers giving instructions and directing where the firing should go.
"After
a canister of teargas had been thrown, ASP Naami and ASP Kumi would halt to
shake their hands" he alleged, and added that the two police commanders
were in khaki uniform.
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Palaver
editor admits his ignorance
The Free
Press says the editor of the NDC mouthpiece, The Palaver, Mr Jojo Bruce
Quansah, had his inflated ego brought down several notches when he was
compelled to swallow his pride and apologise to members of the commission
investigating the May 9, Accra Sport Stadium disaster.
This was
after Mr Quansah had for several days stubbornly refused to accept the fact
that he had erred in challenging the constitutionality of the said Presidential
Commission. He was first dragged before the commission, after he had published
an article in the paper challenging the legality and constitutionality of the
commission.
Mr
Quansah's basis for challenging the legality of the commission was that it was
not established with the approval of parliament.
The
Chairman of the Commission, Mr Sam Okudzeto, a legal luminary, however
contended that the commission was set up under Article 11(7) of the 1992
Constitution, vis-à-vis Constitutional Instrument (C1) 34 and this did not
necessarily needed parliamentary approval.
Other legal
heavyweights serving on the commission, Professor Ofosu Armaah, former Dean of
the Faculty of Law, Legon, and Mrs Akua Kuenyehia, the present Dean, concurred
with this view, but the obdurate editor still refused to accept that his
article was intended to undermine the work of the commission.
Even though
his counsel, Mr Abdulai Inusah Fuseini appealed to Quansah to accept his fault
and retract the story and apologise to the commission, he still refused to
budge.
Angered by
his stubbornness despite his apparent ignorance of legal and constitutional
matters, Mr Okudzeto ordered Quansah to seek legal interpretation of the clause
by Thursday or the committee would take action against him.
Apparently
realizing the mistake he had made, Mr Quansah on Thursday apologised profusely
to the commission and admitted that he had erred.
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'Rebellion'
within CSA
A Group of
civil servants, calling itself "Action Movement of the Civil
Service," on Thursday declared Mr Smart Chigabatia, the Executive
Secretary of the Civil Servants Association, and the entire executive body
removed from office with immediate effect, reports The Ghanaian Times.
They said
an interim executive would be put in place until a permanent body is elected at
their next congress tentatively slated for September.
This was after
a two-hour peaceful demonstration around the ministries during which they
presented copies of their resolution to the Minister of manpower Development
and Employment, Mrs Cecilia Bannerman, and the acting Head of the Civil
Service, Mr Kofi Obeng-Adofo.
They
carried placards, some of which read. "Civil Servants Association not a
monarchy", "¢30 million retirement benefits for CSA Executives,"
"Alhaji Ziblim is a figurehead," "No welfare packages for
members of Association" and "No Accountability by CSA."
The
13-point resolution accused the officers of the CSA of lack of transparency and
accountability in their financial transactions, citing the 1993 and 1994 audit
reports on the CSA, which showed gross mismanagement of assets by the National
Executives.
Edward
Kumi, leader of the group, said that they would write to all sister
associations not to recognize Mr Chigabatia as their executive secretary any
longer.
When
contacted, Mr Chigabatia said that it was only the congress of the CSA, which
could decide his stay in office.
GRi…/
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La Palm
Hotel under BNI siege
The
Ghanaian Chronicle carries that the La Palm Beach Hotel, the exotic five-star
status hotel in Accra, was under siege on Thursday after a security-services
inspired gestapo style swoop caused a desperate flight of all expatriate staff
to their embassies in Accra cowering in fright.
Chronicle's
monitoring of the hotel, built under clearly controversial financial terms
began last week and culminated in the discovery of the shock arrest of the
Front Desk Manager of the hotel at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA) when
she was about to board a South African Airlines flight to Johannesburg.
Ms Caroline
Jackson, a British-South African, was hustled out of line with no real
explanation, court warrant or orders as prescribed by the laws of the land and
prevented from flying.
It was
gathered that she had completed her contract and had duly signed off from her
employers and was therefore not fleeing from the country.
There was a
small matter of a guest from EBL contractors, a guest of the hotel who had
failed to settle a bill of $4,928.00 and some more local currency since January
29 this year which remains in the books under her charge.
The Bureau
of National Investigations (BNI) preferred no charges against her by noon on
Thursday but her experience sent other expatriates scampering for cover as
threats by local staff of the hotel dropped hints of clearing the house of the
expatriate staff, an issue that had featured in angry memos to and fro in
correspondence sighted by the paper.
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Tension at
GCB over ¢24 billion
The Ghana
Commercial Bank (GCB) as per recent media reports has been doing well.
Nevertheless, tension is mounting at the Bank over the exposure by The Dispatch
of how the bank granted various loans totaling $3.5 million (about ¢24.5 billion)
without any security to Omega Wood Processing Limited (OWPL).
There are
also credible reports that GCB may have misled another bank, Standard Chartered
Bank (SCB) to grant OWPL a loan of nearly $1 million.
One of the
reasons for the tension, according to the paper, is the statement by the former
GCB Board of Directors Chairman, Mr John Sey, that there are many unqualified
people working at the bank. He made this allegation, among others when he had a
face-to-face encounter with the editor of the paper on Joy Fm's Super Morning
Show recently.
The
Dispatch says the anger of many of junior and senior staffers is evident from
the numerous letters and phone calls it had received over the past five weeks.
The paper
has however, also received lots of information on certain illegal dealings at
the bank. Investigations conducted at the management level has revealed that
Omega had submitted documentation on properties to be used as security but they
had not been perfected.
A.E. Saoud
Limited had, as at April 15, 2001, (after The Dispatch's exposure) signed the
sales agreement of his factory and land to Omega but as at last week, the
change of ownership had not been effected.
It will be
recalled that in its April 9-15 issue, The Dispatch revealed how the GCB Board,
then under the chairmanship of Mr Sey, approved the $3.5 million to Omega.
Omega was
incorporated on June 9, 1999 and the next day, June 10, it applied for a loan
at GCB where it did not have any accounts.
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ADF gives
Ghana $19 million for rice project
The Board
of Directors of the African Development Fund (ADF) has approved a loan of about
$19 million (15 million units of account) to finance Ghana's inland valleys
rice development project, reports The Accra Mail.
A statement
from the Abidjan-based African Development Bank received in Accra on Wednesday
said the objective of the project is to enhance food security and reduce rice
imports.
"It
specifically seeks to increase the incomes of smallholder rice producers of the
Ashanti, Brong Ahafo, Central, Eastern and Western regions by increasing the
production of good quality local rice," the statement said.
Some 9,000
farmers and 150 people involved in rice milling and trading will benefit from
the project, expected to increase paddy rice production by 60,000 metric tons
over five years.
The ADF,
the Ghana government and the beneficiaries will jointly finance the project.
The ADF loan will be used to finance the entire foreign exchange cost and 76
per cent of the local currency expenditure of the project whose total cost is
estimated at about 21.64 million dollars.
The project
will involve the development of 5,500 hectares of rice, improvement of 280
kilometres of access roads and field tracks and provision of about 6.17 million
dollars credit for farm inputs and equipment. It will also support the training
of beneficiaries and technical staff, and the development of rice agronomic
packages and technologies.
Since 1973
when the African Development Bank Group started operations, it has committed a
total of 741 million dollars to 47 operations. Of this, about 515 million dollars
has been disbursed.
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NDC to mark
June 4
Progressive Organisations
in the country, led by the National Democratic Congress (NDC), will mark this
year's June 4 anniversary with symposia, seminars and lectures, the party's
mouthpiece, the Ghana Palaver reports.
In Accra, a
function is to take place at the Arts Centre, to mark the occasion.
Although
the New Patriotic Party (NPP) has launched a campaign against the observance of
the day as a holiday, many progressive organisations consider that position as negative.
"Holiday
or no holiday, June 4 is here with us. And we shall celebrate the occasion the
way we want it", Alhaji Tanko Issaka, an NGO operative told the paper.
The June 4
popular uprising took place in 1979, when a corrupt military oligarchy was
overthrown, paving the way for "a clean-up exercise", which put a
halt to that crude "kalabule" mad-profiteering system in the country.
The day has
since been observed as a statutory public holiday, during which voluntary
organisations rekindle their
spirit to pursue revolutionary objectives on the country.
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Don't
privatise water sector
The Weekend
Statesman reports that a coalition of NGOs has called on the government to
rescind its decision to privatise the water sector.
Addressing
a press conference in Accra, the Ghana National Coalition Against the
Privatisation of Water, said
privatisation is not the
appropriate solution to the problems of the water sector. "We reject the
view that to be private is to be efficient, and to be public is to be
inefficient," said the coalition in a statement entitled "The Accra
Declaration on the right to Water," read to journalists by Rudolf
Amengo-Etego of the Integrated Social Development Centre (ISODEC),
organisers of the forum.
The
statement said, instead of the government putting the privatisation process on a fast track, it should
rather investigate models that enhance and promote local business, in cooperation
with communities, local government bodies and the Ghana Water Company Limited
(GWCL).
The
coalition, urged the government not to underestimate the important role of
local private businesses, in partnership with communities, Ghanaian artisans
and expertise and local government in ensuring efficient and effective supply
of water.
It noted
that the inability of GWCL to provide efficient and effective services over the
years, and some loss of faith in the company, should be seen within the context
of the broader failure of governance and democracy.
Citing the
judiciary and the security services as an example, the coalition said it was
unlikely that the acceptable solution for the failures of these institutions
would be to privatise
them.
Water, the
coalition, pointed out is a fundamental human right and should not be a common
commodity to be bought and sold in the market place as an economic good.
It called
on the civil society, parliament, the TUC and other organisations to prevail on the government to
drop the planned privatisation of the water sector.
GRi…/
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