GRi Press Review
Ghana 27 - 10 - 2001
Agbogbloshie
car park operators appeal to President
Accra
children to participate in growth standards
Infant
mortality rate drops in Upper East
Robbers
reject cheques
Bad debts
at NIB too much…shareholders unhappy
Jilted
lovers end up in Psychiatric hospital
Ex-convict
becomes 'Messiah'
Relatives
lay wrong body in state
Horror at
Kra-Dente
Operators
of the Agbogbloshie Car Park have appealed to President Kufuor to intervene in
the continuous harassment by a group of young people who claim to be the youth
wing of the NPP in the area.
The Daily
Graphic which carries the story says a statement issued in Accra said the youth
have been issuing threats and intimidating them to vacate from the area since
the MP for the area, Niibi Ayibonte, promised that he would give the park to
the youth to operate if the NPP won the elections.
The
operators, who are a group of 27 retired Air Force officers, said they used
their benefits to establish a company named RAG Ghana Limited.
The manager
of the park, Mr Johnson Osei who is also the spokesman for the company, said
these youth, wielding cutlasses, canes and other harmful implements, have been
threatening them to leave the park or face death. The company won the bid to operate the lorry park, which was
constructed under a World Bank project.
The company
is under a performance guarantee of ¢60 million and is supposed to pay ¢3
million to the AMA every week, he said.
More…/
Accra
children to participate in growth standards
Ghana and
five other countries have been selected by the World Health Organisation (WHO)
to develop new international growth standards for children under five.
The other
countries are Brazil, the United States of America, Norway, Oman and India.
According to the Daily Graphic, this has become necessary because the current
WHO recommended growth standards have outlived their usefulness.
Ghana's
programme is being undertaken by the Department of Nutrition and Food Science
of the University of Ghana, Legon with sponsorship from the Netherlands
Government.
A workshop
on a cross-sectional study, which will form the basis for the development of
the new growth curves, was opened in Accra on Thursday.
More…/
Infant
mortality rate drops in Upper East
The
Kassena-Nankana District of the Upper East Region has recorded lower Infant
mortality rate from 137.50 per 1,000 live births to 104.44 as at last year.
The drop
has been attributed partly to the intervention provided by the Navrongo Health
Research Centre (NHRC).
The center
started as a field station in 1989 to investigate the impact of repeated large
doses of Vitamin A on child survival in the Kassena-nankana District, Mr
Dennise Chirawura, acting Head of the Navrongo Demographic Surveillance System
(NDSS) of the center said at activities marking this year's national
immunization day against polio.
The NDSS is
a continuous population registration system instituted in 1993 by the
registration of the NHRC to provide a platform for assessing population
dynamics and impact of health intervention in the district.
GRi…/
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Robbers
reject cheques
The
decision of the authorities of the Saint Louis Girls' Secondary School in
Kumasi to insist on the use of financial instruments- notable cheques, bank
drafts and postal orders for the payment of fees and other bills by students,
has saved the school from losing millions of cedis to armed robbery.
A gang of
three armed robbers, who stormed the school's accounts office in the early hours
of Wednesday, stumbled on a pile of cheques, bank drafts and money orders worth
millions of cedis but left them untouched, apparently aware that they could not
be easily cashed.
In their
disappointment, the robbers damaged a cabinet and drawers in the offices of the
Assistant Accountant and the Bursar. Eventually, they had to make do with about
¢2 million found in a drawer, according to the Ghanaian Times.
The amount
was said to represent Parent/Teacher Association (PTA) dues and petty cash
meant for certain transactions.
According
to a police source, the robbers, who were armed with pistols, stormed the
Administration Block at about 1.30am and after tying up the two night watchmen
on duty, the robbers broke into the accounts.
One of the
two watchmen who managed to free himself, alerted the headmistress who, in
turn, informed the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST)
police.
More…/
Bad
debts at NIB too much…shareholders unhappy
The
Ghanaian Times carries that shareholders of the National Investment Bank (NIB)
have disapproved management's decision to allow huge provisions for bad and
doubtful debts against declining dividends.
Management
declared ¢26.3 billion as bad and doubtful debts in last year while
shareholders were offered a total dividend of ¢5.3 billion. In 1999, management
provided ¢9.7 billion for bad in debts.
The
shareholders who registered their disapproval at the bank's 32nd
annual general meeting held in Accra on Thursday accused the management of
showing no concern about their interests.
According
to them, for the past two years, no dividends were paid and in spite of all the
sacrifices, only a paltry of ¢100 per share was paid to them as dividend for
last year.
They are
therefore calling for the appointment of their representative on the board to
look after their interest.
GRi…/
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Jilted
lovers end up in Psychiatric hospital
Within the
past five years, a total of about 5,891 patients with various mentally related
ailments were admitted to the Accra Psychiatric Hospital alone.
Of the
number, 70 percent of the problems are partner-related. The partner-related
problems include infidelity, withdrawal of love, insufficient financial support
and physical assault.
A survey
conducted by 'The Spectator' at the Accra Psychiatric Hospital revealed that
the major causes of admissions at the hospital were Depression, Personality
Disorder, Hypomania, Alcoholism, Drug Abuse, Undifferentiated Psychosis and
Bi-polar Affective Disorder.
Dr J.B.
Asare, head of the hospital, in a chat with "The Spectator" said that
in 1996 for example, 1,029 women were admitted to the hospital as a result of
mentally-related problems.
In 1997,
the number of women admitted, increased to 1,048, while in 1998, it shot up
again to 1,132. The year 1999 saw the
figure dropping from 1,132 to 1,069 but shot up again to 1,613 in the year
2000.
Other major
causes of admission at the hospital were schizophrenia, acute organic psychosis
(confusion due to brain affected diseases), epilepsy and dementia (age memory
failure).
More../
Ex-convict
becomes 'Messiah'
An
ex-convict who spent 15 years in jail has resolved to follow in the footsteps
of Jesus Christ, and act as a Messiah to ex-prisoners who need hope in life.
The story
by The Spectator says Mr Jacob A. Atuliba, who was sentenced in 1982 to 15
years in prison by the first Public Tribunal at Bolgatanga for allegedly
spending ¢60,000 to renovate a public building, set up the Preach Christ-prison
Ministries in 1994 to provide spiritual, moral and trade skills to
ex-prisoners.
“The idea
was to guide and assist, resettle and reintegrate them into society and avoid
those evil deeds which sent them to prison.”
During an exhaustive interview with 'The Spectator', Mr. Atiliba said,
"having been incarcerate for 15 years, I accepted Christ as my personal
saviour in the prison.
“Experiencing
the goodness of God and having acknowledged his miraculous works done in my
life, I dedicated my life to the preaching of the gospel to other prisoners who
have passed through my experience and those still passing through it."
GRi…/
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Relatives
lay wrong body in state
Mourners at
a funeral at Number Two, a suburb of Sunyani, last weekend were stunned into
silence and disbelief when they realised that the body that had been lying in
state for about three hours at the family house amidst wailing and singing of
funeral dirges was the wrong body. When they realised that the body was not
that of Opanin Kofi Yeboah, alias Koo munufie, all the wailing stopped.
The Mirror
says for the vigilance of relative, who identified the body lying in state as
not that of heir relative Opanin Yeboah, the bereaved family at Number Two
would have gone ahead to bury the wrong corpse.
The family
had mistakenly exchanged the body of the centenarian relative, for another body
at the mortuary and had beautifully laid it in state preparing for the burial
when the unexpected happened.
A vigilant
grandson of Opanin Yeboah, Solomon Kofi Boadun, after a close examination of
the body drew the attention of the other family members to the fact that the
body that had been laid in state was that of another person.
Initially,
the family members did not believe they were mourning the wrong person until
they saw that the body lying in state had one of the fingers cut off.
More…/
Horror
at Kra-Dente
The Mirror
in another story says horror struck at Kra-Dente in the Kete-Krachi District
last Saturday, when a 58-year old man butchered his former wife to death and in
turn committed suicide.
Salifu
Moshie was said to have trailed his former wife, Yawa Tampuni, when she was
returning from a funeral at Grubi, and murdered her on the way back to
Kra-Dente.
The Krachi
District Police Commander, Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP), Godwin
Geraldo disclosing this to The Mirror, at Krachi, said on that fateful day,
Tampuni left Grubi in the morning to attend a funeral at Kra-Dente.
On her way
back, Moshie followed her on a bicycle and somewhere along the route used a
cutlass to inflict cuts on her body with deep wounds in her abdomen.
After the
dastardly act, Moshie stabbed himself in the abdomen with his intestines
gushing out to end his life.
GRi…/
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