Ritual
murderer extradited
Gov’t
is monitoring world market prices of crude oil
25 per
cent bonus paid to customs officials
How 31st December Women boss Okayed 22.5b after
NDC defeat
Politics blamed for District Chief Executives’
inability to recover funds
"BNI Director saved my life" - W.O.
Patrick Kuntor
Minority wants renovation works investigated
150m cedis manifesto was platform rhetorics
The
Ghanaian Times reports that, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) administration in
the Northern Region has been hit by a fierce power struggle, with the out-going
Regional Minister, Ben Bukari Salifu, alleging that he was being forced out of
office even though he has not officially handed over.
Making
his first public comment to the press at his residence, Mr Salifu accused the
Deputy Regional Minister, Mr Issa Keteku and some party officials including
Alhaji Salifu Abduraman, the regional chairman of perpetrating the act.
He
said that after the announcement of his transfer from the Northern Region to
the National Development Planning Committee (NDPC) as a Minister of State, his
deputy had with the connivance of the executives, usurped all his functions and
kept him in the dark, even though he had not yet officially handed over.
Mr
Salifu said that his efforts to draw their attention to the unconstitutionality
of those acts have failed. “Rather, they go about peddling lies that I have
refused to go to Accra and assume my new schedule”, he added.
Mr
Salifu gave an incidence where he arrived from Accra (to the Northern Region)
on Thursday 25 October 2001 to find his office locked and his secretary
reposted.
He
alleged further that when his official vehicle was sent to the garage for
servicing, the Regional Co-coordinating Council refused to authorize it, yet
that of his deputy was taken care of. He complained that although he had
informed the council of his intention to make his last address at the monthly
meeting of the District Chief Executives of the Region, no protocol was offered
him. According to him, when he got there, his deputy was already with a speech
prepared in his name.
More…/
Ritual
murderer extradited
Sam Abdul, 36, believed to be the leader of a group of ritual murderers operating along the Ghana- Cote d’ Ivoire border, has been arrested by policemen in Cote d’ Ivoire and handed over to the Sampa Police in the Brong Ahafo Region.
Abdul was said to have murdered a 75-year old man, Suleimana Osman, of Sampa and removed his heart, after which he fled to Cote d’ Ivoire, a police source disclosed.
Abdul, a resident of Flatchedoudou near Cote d’ Ivoire, was just about two months ago , granted bail by a law court in the Brong Ahafo Region for being mentioned in a similar offence.
The
“Times” reports that on 17 September 2001, the suspect, who had been
frequenting Sampa as a trader, lured an old man who was unable to walk properly
from his home and took him through a bush path on a bicycle.
When
they got to Bondougou, some people who knew the old man, questioned the suspect
but he reportedly gave them a flimsy excuse and rode off. The people being
suspicious informed the chief of Buko, a village near Sampa, who organised a
search for the old man and the culprit but to no avail.
However,
when the search group arrived at Tomiase Village later in the afternoon, they
found the old man lying in a pool of blood with his chest cut open and his
heart removed. The crime was reported to the Sampa Police who informed the
police in Cote d’ Ivoire, after their search for Abdul had been fruitless. The
suspect was later arrested in a hideout upon a tip off.
GRi…/
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Gov’t
is monitoring world market prices of crude oil
The
government says it is carefully monitoring the world market prices of crude oil
and as and when the situation on the ground indicates that crude oil prices have
come down and stabilised enough within the current macroeconomic environment,
an appropriate decision that will benefit consumers will be made.
The
Deputy Government Spokesman, Kwabena Agyepong, pointed out that even though
world market prices for crude oil have declined in recent times to about 22
dollars from the previous high price of between 25 to 29 dollars per barrel,
there was the need for circumspection in taking decisions in respect of
authorising a price reduction in petroleum products.
The
Daily Graphic, which carries the story, says the government Spokesman was
reacting to calls from the Minority for the reduction in prices of petroleum
products in the country.
More…/
The Ministry of Education has decided to sanction all heads of public second cycle institutions who flouted directives by the Ghana Education Service (GES) not to charge unapproved fees at the beginning of the 2001-2002 academic year.
A
source at the ministry said a survey conducted indicated that contrary to
instructions regarding the admission of fresh students to senior secondary
schools, some headmasters and headmistresses charged over one million cedis per
student.
According
to the Daily Graphic, the source deplored the action of the affected heads of
institutions and said this has led to a situation where many students who
scored good grades but whose parents could not afford exorbitant fees, did not
gain admission to the schools of their choices.
It
pointed out that some of the heads based their admissions strictly on GES
directives and charged approved rates thereby exposing their colleagues who
went contrary to the directives. “ There is no justification whatsoever for a
handful of schools in the country to hold parents and guardians to ransom as if
they were not answerable to any authority”, the source stressed.
The
source also mentioned specifically the imposition of certain levies which swell
up the bills and made it clear that the practice, which has been going on for
far too long, cannot be allowed to be perpetuated to ruin the future of
hitherto clever students with poor financial backgrounds.
It
therefore extended invitation to the public to report all cases of abuse and
extortions, if any, to enable the ministry to put in place measures to sanitise
the system for the orderly development of education in the country.
More…/
25
per cent bonus paid to customs officials
The Ministry of Finance has paid a bonus of 25 per cent to personnel of the Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) for collecting revenue above the target set for the year 2001.
The
bonus this year is 10 per cent higher than what was paid in previous years. The
aim is to motivate the staff to increase domestic revenue collection to at
least 50 per cent above the revenue target for CEPS in the current fiscal year.
The
Commissioner of CEPS, Kofi Opoku- Ntiamoah, who announced this when he
addressed the fifth congress of the Junior Staff Association of the service,
said it is historic for the Ministry of Finance to have offered bonus above the
traditional bonus rate paid to workers.
The
service has so far achieved 20 per cent above its target, and stressed that, “
it is pertinent for workers to compliment the bonus gesture by collecting more
than 50 per cent as pledged”.
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How 31st DWM boss okayed 22.5b after NDC defeat
The Chronicle carries that emerging details of
the payment order okayed by Mrs. Cecilia Johnson, former Minister of Local
Government and a key executive member of the 31st December Women's Movement
(DWM), barely 72-hours before the exit of the NDC from office indicate that the
total payments she ordered amounted to over 22.5 billion cedis (¢22,541,729).
According to the paper, a part of the 22.5
billion cedis was released before she left office on 6 January 2001, 48 hours
after approving payment of the amount from various government funds on 4
January 2001.
Mrs. Johnson is one of the many vocal leaders
of the beleaguered 31st DWM, the politically biased NGO currently the subject
of several investigations. However, Mrs
Johnson and the top operatives of the 31st December Women's Movement have
variously described these investigations as harassment, intimidation and
witch-hunting.
The paper reports that information it gathered
suggested that the Kufuor administration almost settled the rest of the
payments that were not effected prior to the exit of the NDC from office,
before it realised that there might be problems with some of the payments.
For example, in April, Revalap Publishers and
Suppliers Limited, publishers of the ‘Ghana Palaver’ newspaper, allegedly
received its share of a 103.4 million cedis payment Mrs Johnson okayed before
the NPP government directed that it should refund the amount.
The company received 52 million cedis out of
the 103.4 million cedis for the compulsory subscription of the newspaper by all
district assemblies from June-November 2000, a payment the Auditor-General said
was wrongly made because the assemblies never received the newspapers for which
the company received payment.
The Palaver has since challenged that decision,
arguing that it supplied the newspapers. The official NDC mouthpiece, the
‘Ghanaian Democrat’, is also alleged to have had its share of the amount
withheld.
More…/
Politics blamed for District Chief Executives’
inability to recover funds
The massive default and non payment of loans
sourced from the Poverty Alleviation Fund (PAF) by the beneficiaries can
largely be attributed to over politicisation and political patronage that
characterised the disbursement of the funds by the former government, Samuel
Alberto Takyi, District Chief Executive for Wassa Amenfi, has said and stated
that the funds were disbursed on political lines with most of the beneficiaries
being NDC party members and supporters.
As a result, the common perception among the
beneficiaries was that the funds were political gifts, which should not be
repaid. "Apart from this perception some beneficiaries also have this old
feeling that since the funds were from the government, nobody would be held
responsible at the end of the day", he observed.
Mr Takyi, while explaining the steps being
taken by his administration to retrieve the funds from the defaulters at
Asankragwa in the Western Region recently, revealed that out of almost 400
million cedis disbursed by the district in 1998, which was expected to be paid
back in 1999, only 22.4 million cedis had been retrieved as at the end of
October this year.
Even this 22.4 cedis million, he said, was
collected when he took office and went round most of the villages warning the
defaulters about the consequences of their recalcitrant stands and served them
notice threatening to drag them to court.
GRi…/
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"BNI Director saved my life" - W.O.
Patrick Kuntor
W.O. Patrick Kuntor, the former Aide camp and bodyguard
of ex-president J.J. Rawlings has thanked the Director of the Bureau of
National Investigations (BNI), Ellis Owusu Fordjor for saving his life.
In a telephone interview with this paper on
Friday 26 October 2001, W.O. Kuntor confided that the Director had called him
on so many occasions to come for his weapon. He never took notice and never
heeded to his calls.
"But when I was traveling to my village in
Wenchi where I have a farm, I took advantage of the offer and went to collect
my weapon. And that saved my life. If I didn't have my weapon I would not have
been able to fight off the 23 or so armed attackers who came to my house at
1.45 am. I thank God for working through him to save my life", he
disclosed.
W.O. I Patrick intimated that when he arrived
at his residence at Haatso in Accra in the evening of 23 October 2001 and went
to bed at 10:30p.m. “At 1.45 am at dawn
on Wednesday. I overhead my watchman shouting "ookuminoo",
"ookumio" (which literally means they are killing me, they are killing
me). I jumped out of bed, went through the back door and came face to face with
4 people, 2 craning the neck of my watchman. The other two were holding his
hands and struggling with him. They saw me and one fired. The bullets dropped
like the proverbial ninepins. They moved and I went back into my room and
banged the door”.
“I picked my weapon and played back some of the
tricks that we went through when we were specially being trained to be the
sandbags of the former president. I
used my left finger to open the door just enough for my sight and the puzzle of
my pistol then bang! Bang! Bang! I went into action. They scattered and
scampered in all direction. Two of the assailants were lying under the vehicle
I drove from Wenchi. I saw them from the flash of bullets. I was oblivious of
the presence of so many people who were shouting "Dzulo, Dzulo"
thief, thief”.
"The 23 armed men were wearing white
bands. I shot and one screamed and blood
splattered out"
More…/
Minority wants renovation works investigated
The leader of the Minority in Parliament, Alban
Bagbin, has on behalf of the Minority taken the President John Agyekum Kufuor,
Kwamena Bartels former Minister for Works & Housing, the Attorney General
and Jake Obetsebi Lamptey the former Chief of Staff and currently Minister of
Information to the Commission for Human Rights & Administrative Justice
(CHRAJ), according to the Voice.
The Minority wants the CHRAJ to investigate the
renovation works carried out on the President's Residence. They also want the
CHARJ to ascertain the scope of works and the sources of funding for the said
renovations.
In a 22-point petition to the CHRAJ, which has
been published by the paper, the Minority asked the Commission to make orders
on their petition.
GRi…/
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150m cedis manifesto was platform rhetorics
None of the individuals who bought the New
Democratic Congress (NDC) manifestos at colossal amounts at an auction in Accra
prior to the 2000 elections paid up.
"There is no evidence that those who
pledged paid up, they were just platform rhetorics," the Minority Leader
in Parliament, Alban Bagbin told the Public Agenda.
One of NDC's defeated parliamentary candidates
– Opoti Botchway, had the rare opportunity of carrying away a copy of the
manifesto, which were allegedly autographed with the blood of the former
President Rawlings, for a whopping sum of 150million cedis. Two other persons
also carried copies of the book for comparable amounts.
They were just pulling a fast one on the
Ghanaian public, according to the Minority leader, Mr Bagbin who made the
disclosure when asked if he was not being hypocritical when he never questioned
those actions, but is crying foul, when someone gave money to bolster the
security of the President at his private residence at the Airport residential
area.
According to this paper, the Minority Leader
said his role then, as the chairman of the Legal Committee in Parliament did
not permit him to take on those issues. They were the duties of the Minority
and their leader but his present role, as the minority leader requires him to
question those actions. "The worst scenario in any democracy is for the
minority to sink into a state of mere acquiescence," he added.
The Minority in Parliament over the last week
has been calling on the President to a pay for the amount used to bolster his
security in his residence. They are
also asking the tax authorities to go into the books of the philanthropist,
Kwame Marfo, who donated 41 million cedis to the State, to put the issue to
rest.
GRi…/
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GeoMinera
Company Limited, a mining company established in 1993 in Cuba with the aim of
developing new business opportunities in the mining industry, plans to
establish a branch in Ghana.
The
company also hopes to have branches in Venezuela, Togo and Benin. It already
has branches in Europe (specifically Italy) and Columbia in South America where
it operates in mining.
Pedro
O. Vega Masabo, General Manager of the company in Ghana, who is in the country
to establish the branch disclosed in an interview in Accra that the company’s
relationship with Ghana can be traced to about a decade ago.
He
said GeoMinera S.A. produced a master plan for the mining of salt in Ghana; it
later produced feasibility studies for the production of salt in the Ada Songo
Lagoon.
The
company, he said, is in the process of completing negotiations with the
Minerals Commission for salt concessions and has plans to look for other
possible areas of operations after the negotiations.
More…/
Mr Robert Mayfield Yawson, Scientific Secretary of the Food Research Institutes, said in an interview in Accra that, currently, the institute has not yet become involved in the field of genetic modification of foods and organisms.
However,
as part of their objectives, the institute has the mandate to not only advise
the government on issues relating to food security in the country but also to
add value to traditional foods through scientific means.
Mr
Yawson observed that crossbreeding of plants and other organisms to develop
improved hybrids could not be comprehensively termed as genetic manipulation or
modification of the genes of these crops on a molecular level.
He
said, in his opinion, it would be very much expedient and helpful for the
government to import the genetically modified maize, which contains vitamin A
in order to supplement the deficiency of this important nutrient in the
country.
GRi…/
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