120 fans perish
Cabinet meets today
Selormey's bombshell
Ghana Airways staff suffer salary cuts
Graves found at last!
'Scrapallmilitary decrees'
Arab Contractors Outwit GWCL
Bizarre attack by a cock
120 fans perish
More than 120 soccer fans are reported dead while several hundreds were injured following a stampede at the Accra Sports Stadium last night.
Eye witness account said the dead bodies were scattered in t he vicinities of the major hospital in Accra. At the 37 Military Hospital, more than 100 bodies were lying on the floor of the morgue.
At the Ridge Hospital, the Graphic counted nine bodies at the time of going to press. Five bodies at Korle Bu and one at SSNIT Hospital. The authorities at Ridge have posted the names of the injured on the notice board of the ward in which they have been admitted and appealed to the public to consult the boards to determine where the relatives have been admitted.
Facilities in the major hospitals were stretched to their limits as the injured were rushed there fore treatment.
Taxi drivers, commercial drivers and private cars conveyed the dead and the critically injured to the hospitals because of the non availability of ambulances.
The stampede began when the Police fired four volleys of tear gas into irate fans who were destroying plastic chairs at the Ade Coker Stand and throwing them onto the tartan tracks outside the playing field in the dying minutes of the game.
Accra Hearts of Oak won the match by two goals to one.
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Cabinet meets today
President J.A. Kufuor has summoned an emergency Cabinet meeting today to put swift measures in place to deal with measures in place to deal with the disaster that left more than 120 soccer fans dead at the Accra Sports Stadium on Wednesday.
Top aides to the President who disclosed this to the Graphic said the match officials, the Commander of the Security personnel at the stadium and the chairmen of the two clubs have been invited to the meeting.
The aides said for cabinet to come to grips with what triggered off the stampede, Cabinet Ministers will watch video clips of the disaster.
Although top government officials have made it clear that it is too early to apportion blame, reliable sources say some heads will definitely roll.
Devastated President Kufuor last night fought back his grief when he was shown 102 dead bodies of soccer fans at the 37 Military Hospital in Accra.
When the President was shown a room full of dead bodies, he exclaimed "Oh, my God".
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Selormey's bombshell
Investigations by the "Times' have revealed that two sons of Mr Victor Selormey, a former Deputy Minister of Finance, stayed in the house of Dr Fredrick Owusu Boadu in Texas, United States of America where they attend school.
A source close to a law enforcement agency in Accra, confirmed to the 'Times' that Dr Boadu has been named as the man into whose account in the US, the former Deputy Minister authorized the payment of 1.297,000 million dollars.
The amount was paid between December 8, 1998 and October 2, 2000.
The account into which the payments were made is currently empty. Everything has been cleared from it.
Mr Selormey is said to have denied that Dr Boadu paid the school fees of his children.
He said that he paid the fees through the "handsome donations" he got from his father's funeral.
Our investigations show that Dr Boadu has been a personal friend of the former Deputy Minister since their secondary school days in Cape Coast.
Dr Boadu, who is the Managing Director of Leebda Company, was paid the amount ostensibly to provide consultancy service on the court computerization project, but "Tiems" investitions have shown that Dr Boadu never provided any such consultancy service.
No contract had been signed between him and the ministry of Justice or the Minister of Finance for that kind of service and there had been no bidding for the said purpose.
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Ghana Airways staff suffer salary cuts
There is gnashing of teeth at Ghana Airways! The sins of the fathers are being visited on the children.
After years of rape and mismanagement of the national carrier, staff of the airline have been informed that they will have to forgo 30% of their salaries and in addition to that, cabin attendants will also lose up to 40% of their per diem. The only other option is to retain current figures and sack a lot of workers.
Ghana Airways has been in turbulence ever since the airline became over politicized by the PNDC/NDC.
The once proud and vibrant airline is now a pale shadow of its past and inured in debt as well as other ills brought about by internal and external sabotage.
Though the staff of the airline seem resigned to their fate of reduced income, they are also grousing that, "some of the people responsible for our woes" are still roaming about free and even have been given top posts in the current exercise of re-organisation.
Ghana Airways has suffered from dubious management strategies whichat best could be at worst negligence. The charge of negligence has been leveled especially against the management headed by the former Chief Executive, Mr E.L, Quartey Jnr. Who some of the staff accuse of fiddling while his airline floundered.
As is usual in such harsh corporate realities there's much finger pointing and in this case, names like Fred Taylor, Adu Gyamfi, and Captain Paul Fojoe, in addition to the former Chief Executive are wagging on tongues around the corporation.
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Graves found at last!
After weeks of guess work and speculations, as to the exact burial grounds of the executed former heads of state and army-generals who fell victim to the murderous regime of the AFRC, the Daily Guide can reveal today that their actual burial sites have been discovered.
The Daily Guide can say with authority that markings of the burial sites for 7 of them have been located.
The widow of the fallen generals, recently appealed to President Kufuor to exhume the bodies of the three former Heads of State and five army generals to enable them to give the executed generals a fitting and decent burials.
Following from that, the Minister for Media relations recently announced a directive by the President of the formation of a 5-man Committee to locate the burial places of the generals and also to propose how best to exhume and givethem fitting burials so as to lay that matter to rest once and for all.
Their burial places have remained a mystery to the nation for the past 20 years as no one seemed to know where the eight senior military officers' bodies had been buried.
Contrary to information being peddled in certain quarters that the burial was done by a soldier upon the orders of a captain, investigations have established that the actual burial was done by a gang of prisoners, who initially marked the graves with flowers. Later, the Akuapem South District Council for historical purposes, marked the places with metal poles our sources said.
Interestingly, the site of the burial which many believed was within the precincts of the Nsawam Prisons is rather far from the prison itself.
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'Scrapallmilitary decrees'
The Omanhene of Essikado Traditional Area, Nana Kobina Nketia IV has called on the government to throw out all decrees that were enacted by the previous military regimes that are being used along side the 1992 Constitution.
He said if this cannot be done by the government, then Parliament must be tasked to re-enact those decrees which must be embodied in the Constituin so that the country could have one document that contains all the laws of the land.
Nanan Kobina Nketia IV, known in private life as Dr Baffoe Maison, a lecturer at the University of Cape Coast made the suggestion at a public forum organsied in Takoradi last week Wednesday by the Western Regional branch of the Ghan journalists Assocaition (GJA) to mark World Press Day which fell on Thursday (May 3, 2001).
According to the Omanhene, though Ghanaians have been made to understand that the 1992 Constitution supersedes all laws on the land, it is hackneyed to see lawyers and even laymen quoting from decrees enacted by military regimes to counter provisions in the Constition.
"I personally believe tht soldiers have no moral right to enact laws for this country, therefore, all their decrees must either be repealed or be re-enacted by Parliament", he said.
Nana Kobina Nketia cited a case where Dr. Wereko Brobby set up a radio station without obtaining a license because the 1992 Constitution says there is no need to obtain a license before setting up a newspaper or radio station.
Despite this provision, he continue, when Dr Brobby's equipment were seized after which the case was sent to court, the authorities quoted SMC decree which states that "before one sets up a radio station, he must obtain license or be allocated a frequency by the Frequency Allocation Board (FAB)" and that sicne Dr Brobby did not do that he has no right to operate the station.
To him, this decree contradicts what has been written in the Constitution. Therefore, if the authorities think such decrees are still relevant then it be re-enacted and embodied in the Constitution by Parliament which has the power to do so.
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Arab Contractors Outwit GWCL
Arab Contractors, a foreign construction firm, have destroyed several pipelines laid betweent he Pamadze Feedmill Limited and the Winneba junction when they were constructing the Winneba junction - Agona Swedru trunk road few years ago.
Residents within that area have consequently been denied water supply for almost a year now and all attempts to get the damage pipelines replaced with new ones by the Construction firms have failed and the Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) has also done nothing about the situation all this period.
The chiefs, assembly members and opinion leaders in the areas involved have shown mush concern about the issue and have officially reported the matter to the Agona Swedru District Branch of GWCL on several occasions but whenever they go, the usual response has always been "we shall restore it soon."
The residents have been accusing the GWCL for collecting huge sums of money from the Arab Contractors or the replacement of the damaged pipelines but have failed to lay new ones for the supply of water to the areas affected.
When The independent contacted the District Manager of GWCL, Mr Kweku Aggrey, he confirmed the destruction of the pipelines by the Arab Contractors but denied categorically that his outfit has never collected any money from them for the replacement of the broken pipelines.
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Bizarre attack by a cock
We are living in a world full of mysteries. Everyday strange events unfold, which are indeed beyond our human understanding.
What occurred recently at Kajanga village located on the Asutuare-Akuse road, in the Eastern Region is an example of such events.
The residents, as well as neighbours, were thrown into a state of apprehension on the afternoon of April 25, 2001 when a cock attacked passengers on board a moving taxi and seriously wounded two of them.
It was very frightening as the almost unconscious victims, who bled profusely from woulds inflicted on them by the strange bird were pulled out of the damaged vehicle and whisked to the Akuse Government Hospital for treatment.
According to an eye witness, Samuel Larweh, who is also the driver of the taxi cab with registration number ER 5346C, he was conveying passengers from Asutuare to Akuse when the unfortunate incident occurred.
He sadi, he had taken off barely 20 minutes when he noticed a strange bird in the form of an owl flying towards him, but he paid no attention to it.
On reaching Kajanga, a village, the bird surreptiously hit the windsreen on his car and shattered it while it was in motion.
It then entered it and attacked the three passengers seated at the back. He said, s if it had a target, it feasted it beck on the woman seated in the middle and inflicted severe injuries on her. It attacked anyone who tried to stop it.
He said, he was then cokmpelled to stop the car and park as well. He shouted for help, but by the time the residents came the strange bird had turned into a cock.
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