GRi Press Review 28 - 01 - 2003
GWCL officials to be sanctioned
Volta teachers take GNAT to court
Dutch Government Investigates brutal diplomat
He, however, admitted knowing Ms Martha Nkrumah, the woman at the centre of a sex scandal that has been dragged into the limelight. Minister Broni has however, vehemently denied any untoward relationship with the lady. He was reacting to a newspaper publication in an exclusive interview in his office on Monday.
The newspaper had alleged that he (Broni) has coveted a certain Martha Nkrumah, 34, wife of a leading member of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Tony Osei Tutu. The deputy minister also denied the allegations that he has lured Martha Nkrumah from her marital home, using power, influence and money.
He admitted that he met the woman in 2001 when he returned
home from
He said despite that, Ms Nkrumah’s common law husband has since then been threatening him, and has sent warnings that he should make sure his wife returns to the marital home, or he would embarrass him in the media.
According to Broni, Martha’s husband claims that it is because of him (Broni) that his wife deserted the marital home. However, the lady, upon further probing, claimed that Osei Tutu has not married her properly, and has been quarrelling frequently with her parents.
Broni said, “The woman is not a tuber of yam or chicken that I can just pack or tie up and return to Osei Tutu. As for chicken, sometimes even if you tie it up and sent it somewhere, it can always return,” he stated.
The minister said he did not tell the woman in question to leave her matrimonial home and could, therefore not instruct or convey her back to her husband. He added that he has not refused to comment on the issue but has opted to do so in a more formal way. “I remember a man came to my office, who gave his name as Alfred Ogbamey of the Gye Nyame Concord, but could not meet me because I had travelled to Nkawkaw. He took the issue with that and never came back,” he claimed.
He stated that he has never met Osei Tutu in his life, and
he is not familiar with the suburb of
Ms Nkrumah herself, according to the newspaper, was evasive in response to the queries. Whiles not denying or confirming the allegations, she threw a query, “Does having children with somebody make the person your husband?”
People in and around Accra who turned in to an Accra radio station on Monday were shocked as they listened to Tony Osei Tutu, a member of the Young Elephants Forum of the NPP dig into the mud. Osei Tutu alleged that Thomas Broni had lured his wife of 17 years from the marital home, and all his efforts to get his wife, Martha Nkrumah, back home to take care of their infant children, have been futile.
Traumatised, Osei Tutu, has petitioned President Kufuor to help resolve the issue or allow him to handle the matter his own way, since according to him, all efforts to resolve the issue through friends, have failed.
“Sir, I have been able to withstand these traumatic events calmly, so far, by means of prayers and also by the realisation that my party is in power and it is headed by a man we all adore. For this reason, a violent reaction might rock the boat. Therefore, I took counsel from friends urging me to confide in a respected party elder to intervene on my behalf,” he said. – Daily Guide
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The soft-spoken Nkrumaist, who together with other colleagues chose to support the Kufuor administration with their expertise, have constantly come under attack from other Nkrumaists who see their action as a betrayal and desertion from the CPP’s sinking ship.
The latest to join the fray is the United Kingdom and Ireland for the expulsion of Dr Nduom and Freddie Blay, the First Deputy Speaker of Parliament for what they described as “indiscipline and undermining of the party’s position on national issues.”
An unimpeachable source close to Dr Nduom told The Evening News that he had finally resigned from the CPP. According to the source, Dr Nduom’s resignation from the party followed his observation that a “very vocal extreme left wing Minority wants the CPP to engage in perpetual agitation or activist politics.”
It said Dr Nduom wanted to be part of a mainstream CPP with a significant social conscience that would engage in a credible and sincere effort to fight poverty and bring about social justice. The source quoted Dr Nduom as saying that efforts made by him and others to establish new policies and actions that would make the CPP a mainstream credible party had been stalled.
It said Dr Nduom virtually left the party in 2000, after the plans prepared by the Organisation Committee which he chaired were not approved by the party, leading to its humiliating defeat.
Asked whether the resignation was due to the recent newspaper publications that he should be sacked, the source said, “Dr Nduom had not been bothered much by attacks led by the militant wing of the CPP. They were a disappointment to him. It said Dr Nduom had been more bothered by the weak leadership that could not move the party to gain credibility and bring out prominent members of society who are close CPP supporters to come out openly to support the party.
In the final analysis, the source said it was the realisation of Dr Nduom that if he did not act in a timely manner, his hopes of winning the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abirem (KEEA) seat in the 22004 elections could be dashed.
It said he had engaged in broad consultations over the past three months with chiefs and political activists from the various parties and opinion leaders to win all inclusive support in 2004.
Dr Nduom, it said, had won solid support from the influential fishermen association in the constituency, after he had been urged to run an active, clean and grassroot campaign without the distraction of national politics. He was a leader of the Parliamentary Action Group that tried to get the CPP to pay attention to winning Parliamentary seats in the 2000 elections.
When contacted, Dr Nduom declined to comments on the story.
He, however, lamented that “the CPP today is not what my father laboured in
trenches for.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 28 January 2003 - The leader of the Greater Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP), Dan Lartey has described a call by a section of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) supporters on their leadership to sack Freddie Blay and Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom from the party as preposterous.
“Politics is about numbers and so how can we sack people
from the party when we even need more,” he stated. He said the call which was
made by the
Lartey expressed these sentiments in an interview with The Evening News on a wide range of issues. He stated that both Dr Nduom and Blay were entitled to their opinions and that it was a right nobody could take away from them.
On the recent call by the chairman of the CPP for “positive action” by Ghanaians, Lartey said it was his own opinion and not necessarily that of the party. “In any case, I have not seen the CPP organising any demonstration,” he observed.
Mr Lartey, who recently announced the merger of his party with the CPP said he decided to join the CPP because of his desire to abide by the wishes of the masses. He noted that current indications showed that Ghanaians wanted to see ‘Nkrumah’s good works continued” and this was what he also wanted.
Pressed to comment on his presidential ambitions within the CPP, Lartey declined to come clean saying that the rank and file would realise who to vote for when the time comes. As to whether he was still prepared to stay within the CPP if he was not voted for at congress, Lartey said the masses were ready to vote for him in any category they chose.
He said he was ready to pull the CPP along with him to victory in the 2004 general elections and would organise from the grassroot level upwards on a massive scale to achieve the desired results. “At the time of the congress, the leadership would be obvious,” he emphasised.
He stated that he wanted to be in a position where he could be able to influence the rescue of the country from the economic mess created by the NPP and the NDC. Mr Lartey declined to comment further on whether the position of influence was as a president or as a government official.
Commenting on recent reports indicating the opposition of the northern branches against the merger of the GCPP with the CPP, Lartey described the man who wrote the letter as an “impersonator and imposter.” “As far as we are concerned, the man who wrote the letter is not a party member,” he stated.
He said there was no chairman for the party in the north and,
therefore, the author of that letter could only have been an imposter if he described himself as such. “He is not a
regional chairman and so has no position to express,” he added. – The
Evening News
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GWCL officials to be sanctioned
The directive, which was issued on
Yaw Barimah, the sector Minister gave the hint in an interview on Monday with the “Times” when contacted on the outcome of the committee’s work.
He said that the Attorney General’s Department had already advised that 17 top officials of the company should be prosecuted because their offences were found to be criminal. The Minister explained that the board was also advised to institute preventive measures to plug the loopholes in management, especially in procurement from which most of the corrupt deals emanated.
Barimah, who did not reveal names of the affected officials, however, disclosed that most of them were found to have been involved in corrupt deals which cost the company millions of cedis.
He explained that the over one year delay in issuing the directive was due to the time needed to ensure that the right decisions were taken. The Minister was hopeful that the Board would soon start implementing the committee’s directives and the recommendations which, he said, were necessary to improve upon the management of the company.
It is recalled that the Justice Adade Committee which was set up to look into the alleged malfeasance in the purchase of materials and other corrupt activities at the GWCL, presented its report and recommendations to the sector Minister on Friday 21 December 2001 after several months of probe and deliberations. – The Ghanaian Times
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Ho (Volta Region) 28 January 2003 – Teachers in the Volta Region have filed a writ at the Ho High Court for a perpetual injunction against the regional branch of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT), restraining it from making any further deduction of 10,000 cedis as GNAT hostel levy until the final determination of the case.
They have further asked for the a declaration restraining GNAT agents, servants, workmen, privies and assigns from making any deduction from their salaries contrary to Article 10(4) of the GNAT Constitution which stipulates that members of the association must be summoned to a meeting to discuss any deductions from their salaries, there had been unconstitutional deductions of 10,000 cedis from every teacher’s pay since 24 July 2002.
The plaintiff contended that the defendants in flagrant violation of the GNAT Constitution, called a meeting on 25 July, last year, after deducting 10,000 cedis without any discussion on the issue. They maintained that the unauthorized and unconstitutional deductions had so far not been accounted for and therefore prayed the court to grant the relief being sought.
But the defendants in their statement denied the allegations. They however admitted the 10,000 cedis deduction from each teacher’s salary. They argued that under the constitution and rules of GNAT, it was only the Regional Council that may impose a special levy on all members of the association in the region for a specific project.
The defendants said that a technical committee meeting agreed at the Regional Conference that 10,000 cedis should be deducted from each member’s salary for 36 months.
They therefore prayed the court to dismiss the claims of the
plaintiffs. M.Z. Glover is counsel for the plaintiffs, while Ernest Gawie is representing the defendants. Hearing has been
fixed for 17 February. – The Ghanaian Times
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Accra (Greater Accra) 28 January 2003 – At a time when the government is struggling to equip the Ghana National Fire service (GNFS), $200,000 which is equivalent to 1.7bn cedis that it paid for the importation of an ultra modern fire tender has so far become bad money.
SCOA Motors Ghana, an automobile importer which took the money late 2000 on the agreement that it would deliver the IVECO tender in three months never did. Soon after, SCOA filed papers to declare itself bankrupt. Bankruptcy simply means without enough money to pay what you owe, and it is often declared in court to make it valid.
The General Manager of SCOA, Gadzekpo told a court at the former Ministry of Cocoa Affairs, chaired by Justice Ziblim, that his company had gone broke and could not honour the obligation of delivering the fire tender.
The GNFS, incensed by the surprising disappointment, pressed the case till the Judge was transferred from the circuit court. After that the case was not called for a long time. When “Chronicle” checked at the court last week, a clerk there, Duncan Williams, said the docket could not be located.
As a result of devastating fire outbreaks that hit
These were three Mercedes Benz (Zieggler)
fire engines, which could produce Foam water, and water to fight blazing fires
at a very fast speed.
A tender board was organised, chaired by the current chief officer. And though SCOA Motors had never supplied the service with any tenders the company managed to convince the board it would be the best choice. SCOA was given the offer.
According to documents sighted at the GNFS head office, Gadzekpo was given 1.7bn cedis in dollars. After collecting the $200,000 and failing to deliver the IVECO truck he wrote to the GNFS to plead for more time, saying he could not raise enough dollars to import due to “shortage of that foreign currency” on the local market.
At another time, the GNFS was informed that the truck was on
high seas on its way to the
When the Cocoa Affairs Court was contacted, the registrar there explained that all cases that had been handled by Justice Ziblim were transferred to the Accra Regional Circuit Court-formerly regional tribunal. And it was the Regional Circuit Court that “Chronicle was told that the docket on the $200,000 case was nowhere to be found.
If really the file of the case were missing it may not only mean a loss of the $200,000 or the end of the GNFS dream of acquiring the powerful fire engine. It may also mean that the fate of other customers who sued SCOA after it had declared bankruptcy would hang in the balance.
Dr Ato Quarshie
and Kwabena Fosu, both ex-ministers in the erstwhile
government, are two such people who sued SCOA. But the Public Relations Officer
of the GNFS, Ekow Aban,
insisted that the on the case is somewhere between the two courts and must be
found. – The Ghanaian Chronicle
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They had the resources at their disposal to be able to tell Ghanaians to truth but woefully failed to do so for reasons best known to them”, Pratt stressed in his reaction to the report of the Committee of Enquiry tasked to investigate the circumstances leading to the death of Gladys Ampadu at the Ridge Hospital in Accra in June last year.
Pratt also asked the Committee to apologise to Ghanaians for
not “doing a good enough job”. According to him, “the Committee had a real
opportunity to help unearth the problems that bedevil
He however expressed the joy he had been vindicated by the Committee’s report which he had touched on the need for improvement of health delivery, adding that though the report did not go far enough on the issue, it provided the starting point for action.
Pratt said the Committee’s proposal that the body of the late Mrs Gladys Ampadu be exhumed to ascertain cause of death was an indictment of the Committee, the Ministry of Health and the Director General of the Ghana Health Service.
According to him the Committee’s reliance, in its investigations, on provisional diagnosis of the doctors who saw and treated Gladys Ampadu and pronounced her as having died of gastroenteritis was improper because the Committee was supposed to be independent and expected to arrive at independent findings.
Pratt submitted that, “the fact that the Committee decided to adopt the so called provisional diagnosis only confirms the fact the Committee either did not do its work well or simply decided to ignore the evidence in order to be able to arrive at the conclusion it had predetermined.”
He said the deceased’s mother who stayed at her bed side throughout her admission at the hospital together with the deceased’s husband told the Committee that the deceased never had diarrhoea at the time of her illness.
Pratt continued that the deceased’s mother told the Committee that throughout the deceased’s hospitalisation, she never spoke until she was about to die when she mentioned her husband’s name and her (mother’s) name and instructed that her children be taken care of.
“The Committee’s silence on this very important issue however is so loud that it breaks the ear”, Pratt complained. He wondered why the Committee was still talking about a provisional diagnosis which was not based on any evidence.
Pratt challenged the Committee for not being bold in stating that there was no evidence before it to support the diarrhoea diagnosis arrived at by the Health Ministry and the Director General of Health Services whereas, it (Committee) had the courage and unhesitatingly referred to Dr Kweku Sakyi Obuobi who apparently did not see the patient (deceased), but signed the medical cause of death certificate dated 10 June 2002.
He also cited the Committee’s reference to the doctors who attended to the deceased and did not diagnose her of typhoid fever, and the wider test which said “there is no evidence that Mrs Gladys Ampadu had peritonitis (from typhoid perforation) as stated on the medical cause of death certificate.”
Pratt asked: “which of the doctors who saw the deceased diagnosed her of diarrhoea? Who is deceiving whom? Is this a case of a Rush to Judgement?” “The Insight” Editor referred to the Committee’s recommendation of not being able to establish conclusively who might have removed the missing page from the surgical cases record book and questioned how come Mrs Ampadu’s name came to be associated with surgery records if she did not undergo surgery.
Pratt Jnr complained that Dr Afriyie told the nation that the Committee’s work was that of a public enquiry, and yet it (Committee) started work unannounced, and it was a week into its (Committee’s) working period that he (Pratt Jnr) was invited.
He said when he appeared before the Committee, he was asked not to publish the proceedings at the sitting. This, Pratt Jnr said, he regretted, for if he had published the proceedings, the public would have been fed the evidence emanating from the sittings which would have in turn inform the conclusion and recommendations of the Committee.
He said before and during the investigations, he made clear
that the thrust of his publication was to draw attention to the lack of standby
generator at the
But when the Health Minister announced the formation of the
Committee of Enquiry, said Pratt Jnr, the terms of reference of the Committee
“imposed a very severe constraint on its ability to be of help in finding
solutions to the problems of the
As the Editor of “The Insight”, Pratt Jnr stated that he accepted editorial responsibility for the paper’s contents, but resented what he termed as an attempt by the Ministries of Information and Health to personalize the issues. – The Crusading Guide
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Dutch Government Investigates brutal diplomat
According to a high ranking source within the Dutch Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, the Dutch Ambassdor to
The case which is generating debate in
In
By last Friday, the Dutch Embassy has distanced itself from
commenting on the matter. The Press Officer of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in
“We have been advised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs not
to comment on the issue” he said. Even though the Dutch Embassy has not named
the diplomat involved, “Chronicle” sources in
“This incidence is very unfortunate, especially coming after
the successful celebration of the 300 years of diplomatic relations with
It would be recalled that on 8 January 2003, “Chronicle” broke the story of how Dutch diplomat and his wife who launched a brutal assault on 25 year old Musah Issifu, a Safetech security guard stationed at their residence.
In his own account of the incident, Musah
Issifu, a native of Bawku-Upper
East Region who lives at Maamobi, a suburb of
Coincidentally, the wife of the diplomat who was about to go out spotted the guard pushing the dog so she approached him furiously and said that if the guard does not take care she would caused his dismissal.
In his own words, Musah said the diplomat screamed at him saying “when your supervisors come, tell them to change you because I don’t want to come back and meet you here. Musah said when the diplomat’s wife came back and saw him in the house she pulled out her mobile phone and spoke to someone and dashed straight into the sitting room.
“About 20 minutes later, her husband also blew the horn so I quick rushed and opened the gate. On hearing the noise of her husband’s vehicle the woman came back from the room and said something to her husband which I did not hear,” he said.
Musah continued that after listening to the wife, the diplomat turned and yelled “hey black dog, come here!!! I did not mind because I thought he was referring to his dog. But he repeated and said “you security man come here”.
Musah said at this time the diplomat’s wife had begun shedding tears, so her husband asked him, “What happened to madam”? Before he could explain the diplomat slapped him and hooked his neck, Musah said he also held the neck of the diplomat and he and his wife grabbed the cutlass from the garden boy and began lashing him with it.
“In the ensuing struggle, the Dutchman lost one of his shirt buttons and I also lost my shirt button. The husband was shouting, “You will pay for my shirt and the wife continued to hit me with the cutlass-langa langa”.
At the time of the incident, the Embassy pleaded ignorance to the incident and refrained from any comments. The Foreign Affairs Ministry of Ghana has also not issued any statement on the issue. Observers say they are watching how the case will unfold but hoped that the investigation by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs would not be that of a whitewash. - The Ghanaian Chronicle
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