GRi Press Review
Ghana 13 - 10 - 2001
'Let get
Fund cover all students'
Lightening
kills two
SSNIT,
Assembly at war
Pity! Girl
loses leg and arm
Ex-police
officer colonises
road
'Let get
Fund cover all students'
The
Registrar of the University College of Education Winneba (UCEW), Mr J.N. Aryeetey, has
described as discriminatory the use of the Ghana Education Trust (GET) Fund to
subsidise residential facility
user fees for residential students in tertiary institutions to the exclusion of
non-residential students, reports The Daily Graphic.
He stated
that the payment of subsidies for residential students in tertiary institutions
to the exclusion of non-residential students in both public and private
tertiary institutions from the GET Fund "is not the best thing to do with
the fund".
"I
believe that the apparent reversal of the policy of decoupling admission from
accommodation could have a negative spiral effect and put a strain on the GET
Fund" he stated when he gave the keynote address at the second annual
congress of the Ghana Association of University Administrators (GAUA) at UCEW
on Thursday.
Administrators
of universities of Ghana, Cape Coast, Development Studies and Kwame Nkrumah
University of Science and Technology, private universities and polytechnics
attended it.
Mr Aryeetey
said equity demands that every Ghanaian child of school going age should
benefit from the fund and the only effective way of doing this is to ensure
that much of the fund is used to arrest the deteriorating conditions in the
physical facilities and equipment in our schools.
More…/
Lightening
kills two
A
lightening at Edubiase in the Adansi East District of Ashanti on Thursday evening
killed two persons.
One of the
deceased, a female, aged 20, was said to have died on the spot, while a male
victim died on the way to the hospital.
They are yet to be identified, according to the Daily Graphic.
Mr D.A.K.
Yeboah, District Chief Executive of the area who disclosed this in an interview
said the incident occurred at the New Edubiase market around 5pm during a heavy
downpour.
The
lightening was said to have rendered seven people unconscious and killing one
person on the spot.
Onlookers
rushed the seven, who collapsed to the hospital, but one died on the way. The
other six were treated for shock and discharged.
More…/
Don't drive
beyond 7pm
The vehicle
and Driver Licensing Authority (DVLA) has reminded learner drivers that it is
an offence to drive beyond 7pm. They are also forbidden to drive on the
highways and carry passengers.
Mr Justice
Amegashie, Chief Executive of DVLA, said in an interview in Accra that learner
drivers are required by the Road Traffic Amendment Regulation to observe what
he called a curfew period from 7pm, to 5am, during which they are not supposed
to be on the road.
They must
also be accompanied by their instructors while on the road, Mr Amegashie stated
and deplored the high incidence of some learner drivers flouting road traffic
regulations and posing danger to other road users, and said DVLA has begun a
joint exercise with the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) to bring the
culprits to book.
GRi…/
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SSNIT,
Assembly at war
The Social
Security and National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) and the New Juaben Municipal
Assembly are at each other's throat, according to The Ghanaian Times.
Each is
accusing the other of indebtedness and SSNIT has threatened court action
against the latter.
The SSNIT
is claiming ¢90 million in Social Security contributions from the Assembly, but
the Assembly says that SSNIT is rather owing them ¢120 million in respect of
property rates, a report presented to the Assembly at its third Ordinary
Meeting at Koforidua on Wednesday by the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE), Nana
Adjei Boateng said.
The report
also revealed that ¢80.3 million allocated to the Assembly in November 2000,
for the rural electrification project, was misapplied.
Nana
Boateng said enquiry revealed that the money had been credited to the
Assembly's account and utilised "as if it was part and
parcel of our normal District Assembly Common Fund (DACF) receipts".
He said that the Assembly would need not less than ¢5.6
million to complete 17 on going projects which had not seen any meaningful
works on site for over a year now.
Nana Adjei
Boateng announced that between January and December 2000, the Assembly
collected a total revenue of ¢403,244 million. Out of the amount, ¢227,768
million was collected between January and May 2000.
More…/
Seventy-five
per cent of funds allocated to the Ghana Prisons Service goes into feeding
prisoners to the detriment of its planned projects including the provision of
vocational training workshops.
The Public
Relations Officer, Superintendent Solomon Antwi, is reported by the Times as
saying that though officers in the service complained about the increasing
number of inmates, judges persisted in remanding suspected criminals creating
overcrowding in the Prisons and causing fluctuations in the budgets of the
service.
The
Ghanaian Times which carried the story, says it contacted the service to find
out why prisons in the Northern part of the country has no workshops to give
vocational training to the inmates.
Superintendent
Antwi admitted that the machinery in the few workshops the service has
nationwide had become obsolete and unusable, explaining that the primary
purpose of rehabilitating criminals in the prisons was gradually becoming an
illusion since most of the prisoners became a burden on society after they were
discharged for lack of skills.
To that
end, he directed all the Regional Commanders in the Prisons Service to identify
simple and inexpensive raw materials in their respective regions so that the
prisoners could be trained to use it to their benefit.
Mentioning
cloth and basket weaving, dress and shoe making as major trades which could
easily be taught in the prisons, Mr Antwi stated that the management of the
service was determined to shift from using heavy and very expensive machines in
training prisoners since "their spare-parts are very difficult to come by
now a days".
More…/
Armed
robbers at dawn last Monday raided the house of the Upper Denkyira District
Director of Education taking away properties worth million of cedis.
Numbering
eight, the robbers who wielded guns, held people in the house hostage, beat
them up and ransacked their rooms.
They took
away a blue and white KIA bus, GT 1261
belonging to the St. John's Preparatory School at Swedru.
The robbers
also took away a television set, a video deck, a mobile phone and other items
including unspecified amount of money.
Mr John
Quaicoo, the District Director of Education was not in the house at the time of
the incident. He was attending a
conference at Koforidua. An eyewitness said the robbery occurred at about
2.30am.
The robbers
confined the people in the house to a room and ransacked the place before they
made away with their booty.
According
to the Ghanaian Times the house owner's daughter was mal-handled together with
some children and a watchman.
GRi…/
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Pity! Girl
loses leg and arm
An
unsuccessful trial-and-error method adopted by a Wa-based herbalist has
rendered a 13-year-old girl incapacitated for life, writes The Mirror.
The little
girl, Amaita Seidu, was said to have fallen from a tree resulting in a fracture
of her right arm and left leg, a reason for which her parents sought the
assistance of a herbalist at Kulpkong in the Wa District to heal the broken
limbs.
However,
after several weeks of failed attempts by the herbalist to heal Amaita, her
parents sent her to the Wa Regional Hospital where the medical officer who
attended to her had no alternative than to amputate the limbs to save her life.
In an
interview with The Mirror at Wa, Dr Edward Gyader, Medical Director in-charge
of the Wa Regional Hospital, said Amaita fractured her left femur, right radius
and ulna bones.
He said the
herb used was toxic, thus causing severe necrosis of both limbs with severe
infections.
GRi../
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The
Spectator
The
Spectator writes that a labourer and former fisherman, married to two women, should be of interest to
compilers and editors of the Guinness Book of Records for a peculiar reason.
The
38-year-old illiterate, determined to become a scholar, had to bear the
persistent jeers and taunts from little boys and girls, and even divorce from
one of his wives, to school and pass the Basic Education Certificate
Examination (BECE) with Aggregate 25.
Some of the
little urchins who jeer at him are his classmates at the Gomoaman Preparatory
and JSS (GOMPESCO) at Asebu in the Gomoa District of the Central Region.
The cheerful
father of five, John Bentum, is known by his mates and teachers as Senior Man.
He enrolled in the school three years ago in JSS1, after only a year's stint at
formal education in Winneba. He completed JSS 3 this year and clocked a decent
aggregate of 25. He is scheduled to be honoured by the school soon for the outstanding feat.
The mirror
reports Bentum as saying in an interview at the premises of the school when he
came for his exam result, that he did not allow himself to be distracted by
those taunts, jeers and divorce from one of his two wives, as he strongly
believed that it was never too late for him to go to school.
Bentum
said, out his father's 15 children only the oldest was sent to school with the
rest taking to fishing, their father's occupation.
More…/
Ex-police
officer colonises road
A retired
Deputy Commissioner of Police who single-handedly tarred a road passing in
front of his house at Dansoman in Accra has blocked the road.
The
Spectator, which carried the story, says Mr J.A. Adams have taken the action
because he footed the entire bill for tarring the road, and he also does not
want to be disturbed by vehicles plying the road at night when he is asleep.
"The
Spectator" received a call from an anonymous person last week Monday and
acted swiftly by going to Mr Adams' house with the assemblyman Alex
Bruce-Appiah, to verify the allegation on Wednesday, October 3.
Erected
pillars were used to block the road and the Spectator says when Mr Adams was
questioned, he said that the road was blocked since 1979 and that, the road is
a cul-de-sac, that ended only at the gate of his home.
When
pressed further, Mr Adams said the reporter and the Assemblyman should go to
the Lands Department or State Housing Corporation to ascertain whether the road
was thoroughfare or a cul-de-sac.
He,
however, said, he was prepared to open up the road by removing the pillars only
if the A.M.A. would help the residents to tar the other side of the road.
GRi…/
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