He said the 55
million-dollar worth of the military equipment would only help the country
upgrade her arsenal to conform to United Nation's peacekeeping standards. Ghana
has consistently contributed troops and logistics to the World Body
peacekeeping operations since 1960.
The Minister was
reacting to concerns during a debate for the adoption of a report on a loan
agreement for 55 million dollars for the purchase of equipment and other
logistical requirements of the Ghana Armed Forces' UN peacekeeping operations.
The loan agreement is
between Ghana and Barclays Bank Ghana Limited and Barclays Bank PLC. He said
Ghana would lose her enviable position in the global peacekeeping community if
it did not upgrade her arsenal.
"The UN has
consistently complained about the poor conditions of the equipment our men use
during such operations." Dr Kwame Addo-Kufuor,Minister of Defence, said
the UN has passed a resolution making it mandatory for it to reimburse countries
who use their equipment for the body's peacekeeping assignments.
Major Samuel Amponsah
(retired),NDC-Mpohor Wassa East, said soldiers get much exposure during such
operations adding, they appreciate peace and democracy when they witness
fragile situations brought about as a result of oppression.
"When they go
out, they get a few dollars but when they are always here some them create
political problems for us." He said:" In the 1960s, when we went to
Congo, all that we needed were provided. I think this loan would help our
soldiers a lot because this is quite different."
Mr Eugene Atta
Agyepong, Chairman, Joint Committee on Finance and Defence and Interior, said
the loan, which is supposed to be paid within three years would procure
equipment for peacekeeping operations in Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra
Leone and South Lebanon.
He said Ghana Armed
Forces' average expected reimbursement from the UN, when the equipment is
acquired is about 60 million dollars per annum. The estimated expenditure is
about 30 million dollars leaving a balance of 30 million dollars.
He said under the
agreement, Ghana is expected to pay 20 million dollars annually. "Monies
accruing from the reimbursement system would be lodged in designated escrow
account in the United States. It is therefore, from this account that the Ghana
government is expected to liquidate the loan facility within the period of
three years."
The Chairman said
even though the UN would pay for the use of the equipment to be bought by the
loan, it would still remain the bonafide property of the Ghana Armed Forces.
Mr Agyapong said the
Ghana Armed Forces is expected to purchase the equipment from a primary source
and not through a third party. "The loan agreement requires that the
government of Ghana give guarantee to Barclays Bank to enable them secure their
money so that in the unlikely event of the UN's refusal or failure to include
Ghana Armed Forces in their operations, the government would bear the cost of
the loan.
In a subsequent
resolution, 133 members voted for loan, no one opposed but Mr Doe
Adjaho,NDC-Avenor and Mrs Edith Hazel,NDC-Evalue Dwira abstained.
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Accra (Greater Accra)
18 December 2002- President John Agyekum Kufuor returned home on Monday night
from Togo and Cote d'Ivoire where he attended a one-day summit of five leaders
in the sub-region on the Ivorian crisis.
President Kufuor and
leaders of Senegal, Togo, Nigeria and Liberia first met in the northern
Togolese city of Kara on how to find a lasting solution to the deepening crisis
in Cote d'Ivoire.
After the initial
talks in Kara, the leaders flew to Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire, to confer with the
Ivorian leader, Laurent Gbagbo. The Foreign Minister, Mr Hackman Owusu-Agyemang
and the Defence Minister, Dr. Kwame Addo-Kufuor, accompanied the President.
An ECOWAS summit
would be held in Dakar, Senegal, on Wednesday to find how to push forward the
stalled peace process. Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade, who is also the
ECOWAS chairman, said the Contact Group on Cote d'Ivoire would meet and present
a report to the full summit.
"We cannot
accept this situation for long any more," President Wade said. "We
should work out a plan to solve the problem." He said West African leaders
should come out strongly to implement the plan and prove to the world that the
sub-region is capable of solving the Ivorian problem.
The ECOWAS efforts
come as France sent in more troops into the troubled West African state with
orders to intervene in the fighting between rebels and government soldiers. The
main rebel group, the Patriotic Movement of Cote d'Ivoire (MPCI), which
occupies more than half the country to the north, has said it is ready to take
on French soldiers in Ivory Coast because they have taken sides in the
conflict, but the French have warned that they are ready to fight them if
attacked.
The fighting in Cote
d'Ivoire is creating a serious refugee situation with internally displaced
persons and refugees who had fled the fighting in Liberia being at risk. The UN
refugee agency says it was considering moving the Liberian refugees to another
location inside or outside the country.
The government in
Cote d'Ivoire has been fighting rebels who took up arms on September 19 when
some 750 soldiers mutinied over demobilization plans. The mutiny turned into a
full-scale coup attempt to oust President Laurent Gbagbo with the MPCI seizing
a huge chunk of the country to the north.
Initial attempts by
the government to dislodge the rebels by taking their headquarters of Bouake
failed as they were beaten back. The situation has become more complicated over
the past couple of weeks with the emergence of two new rebel groups - the
Popular Movement for the Great West and Movement for Justice and Peace (MJP) -
in the west of the country pledging allegiance to former military ruler Robert
Guei who was killed in the main city of Abidjan on the first day of the mutiny.
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Accra (Greater Accra)
18 December 2002- Mrs Merley Afua Wood, Principal State Attorney of the
Prosecution Department of the Attorney General's Department, on Tuesday called
for the enactment of specific legislation to prosecute child traffickers.
She said the
provisions under which offenders are prosecuted now fall under
misdemeanours" and therefore carry a maximum punishment of three years
with no option of a fine.
"There are
instances that some are jailed for only three months whilst some are jailed for
six months which is unbelievable. This is simply because there is no specific
legislation to prosecute them," Mrs Wood said at a day's workshop on child
trafficking for ministries, departments and agencies throughout the country.
She suggested that
offenders should be given hasher punishment considering the effect of
trafficking on children. Mrs Wood noted that a draft bill on child trafficking
was yet to be sent to parliament for debate and this was long overdue as the
child cannot wait. "The earlier something is done the better it will be
for our children," she said.
Mrs Wood explained
that children in Ghana were trafficked mostly from the rural communities to
urban areas to run errands that were hazardous, exploitative and harmful to
their health, safety and development.
She said such
children are psychologically isolated and traumatised by the abominable working
conditions that make them lose their human dignity. Mrs Wood urged parents not
allow their children to be lured into slavery, saying they should try as much
as possible to educate their children.
Mr Eric Okrah,
National Project Coordinator of the International Labour
Organisation/International Programme of Eliminating Child Labour (ILO/IPEC),
said parents of such children gave out their children because of poverty.
Other reasons were
the desire for better life, lack of educational opportunities, greed, cultural,
breaks up of the traditional family structure, political conflict and natural
disasters. He said ILO regards child trafficking as a human rights violation
and a degrading misuse of human resources in undignified and unproductive work
and is doing everything possible put an end to it.
Mr Okrah mentioned
some intervention strategies adopted as tackling poverty, interception, rescue
and reintegration of trafficked children with their families, community
mobilisation and raising awareness of the needs of children within the
judiciary.
He urged MDAs and
other non-governmental organisations to include the education on child
trafficking into their programmes to help curb the inhumane practice.
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Accra (Greater Accra0
18 December 2002- Mr Jake Obesteby-Lamptey, Minister of Information and
Presidential Affairs on Tuesday said the government spent 1.7 billion cedis on
the Wuaku Commission's investigations into the circumstances that led to
fighting between the Andani Gates and the Abudu Gates of Dagbon State in March
this year.
He said, "war is
very expensive and destructive, which must be avoided at all cost as the amount
spent on demobilization, rehabilitation and reconstruction could have been used
for improvement of existing infrastructure as well as initiate new developmental
projects for the benefit of the people."
Mr. Obesteby-Lamptey
stated at the launching of the National Campaign for Sustained Peace and
introduction of audio video clip on the campaign to the media in Accra. The
Campaign aimed to create awareness and sensitise the public about the
destructive nature of war and conflict and the value of peace for social
economic development of a nation.
He expressed concern
about the pocket of conflicts in the country and caution that "peace is
priceless and must not be taken for granted." The Information Minister
noted that ethnic conflicts, chieftaincy and land disputes remain significant
problems, adding that this year saw a disturbing increase in the number of
conflicts leading to several outbreaks of violence across the country.
"The
disturbances should serve as a sober reminder that much remains to be done to
find a lasting solution to the conflict," he noted.
Mr Alban S. K.
Bagbin, Minority Leader said the tragedy of Africa is that after rising up in
unison against colonialism, we now turn guns on ourselves, instead of fighting
the next stage of the liberation struggle against poverty, hunger and disease.
He said: "our
enemies are not another ethnic group or clan, religious group or political
party; the foes are ignorance, disease and depravity, which must be the targets
of the second liberation war in Africa."
He said the relative
peace the nation is enjoying within a sub-region torn apart by strife did not
come on a silver platter. It took many years of sustained efforts by the
political, traditional and religious leaders to foster unity among the various
ethnic groups, religious persuasion and political ideologies.
Hon. Bagbin said the
Peki-Tsito conflict, the Konkomba-Nanumba war, and the recent Yendi carnage and
a few others have jolted the nation into waking up to the realization that the
country could travel the road to Cote d'Ivoire, Liberia and Somalia.
The Minority Leader
caution all to be forever state alert as such disturbances could become the
launching pad dissatisfied people to ignite a bonfire, which will end up
consuming all.
He pledged the
Minority's commitment in supporting the campaign for peace, stressing that
"we must all join hands to help maintain and consolidate the current peace
and eliminate the pockets of potentially explosive conflicts around us."
He said, "as
politicians we are committed to the development agenda and have pledged to
initiate and support prudent policies and equitable actions towards the
eradication of poverty, ignorance and disease.
Other speakers
include, the Reverend Ekow Woode, General Secretary of the Ghana Pentecostal
Council and the Ameer of the Ahamadis, Maulvi Wahab Adam who, on behalf the
Forum of Religious Bodies pledged their total support for the campaign.
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Accra (Greater Accra)
18 December 2002- A Nigerian evangelist, Ikechukwu Okoye, who allegedly defrauded
two United States evangelists of 15,000 dollars, has been remanded by a Madina
Magistrate Court to reappear on 23 December.
Chief Inspector Agnes
Hamenoo said Okoye, a member of the Holy Ghost Outreach Ministry in Ghana, was
a close friend of Evangelist Erline Grant, founder of the Ministry. Okoye wrote
to Grant, who heads the main branch of the Holy Ghost Outreach Ministry based
in Trinidad in the United States asking for financial assistance.
In August he faxed a
letter to Evangelist Grant informing her that his late father, an Italian, had
left 2.7 million dollars in an Expro Account. He wanted her to assist him with
15,000 dollars for payment of taxes to the Ghana Government to enable transfer
of the said amount into the Ministry's account based in Cape Coast.
On 11 December
Evangelist Grant arrived in the country with one Bishop Leroy Creese, an
evangelist from New York. Okoye and three other accomplices took them to Brazz
Hotel at Haatso and collected 15,000 dollars from them.
Okoye and his accomplices
requested for another 10,000 dollars and it was to be given to them on 13
December at the same hotel. But the two foreign evangelists got a hint that the
Nigerians were fraudsters and alerted the police. Okoye was arrested when he
showed up but his accomplices got away.
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Kumasi (Ashnti
Region) 18 December 2002- The Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly (KMA) has started an
exercise to prosecute individuals and organisations who are indebted to it.
Five of such
defaulters on Tuesday appeared before the Ashanti New Town magistrate court in
Kumasi. They are CDC Laundaries, Handyman Paints, Sugar Hill Hotel, Anthony
Timbers and Mr O.P.D. Oppong.
They have defaulted
in the payment of property rates ranging from 2.6 to 4.6 million cedis since
1999. The court ordered the defaulters to settle all their outstanding debts
within seven days or have their properties attached.
The court also
awarded cost ranging from 200,000 to 400,000 cedis against the defendants.
Briefing the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Kumasi after the court proceedings, Mr
Isaac Acheampong of the General Law Consult, solicitors of KMA, said more than
100 defaulting property owners were on the row for prosecution.
He said another batch
of defaulting property owners who had been served with writ of summons would
appear in court in January 2003.
Mr Acheampong,
however, said those who would make arrangements to settle their indebtedness
within an agreeable period would not be prosecuted.
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Kumasi (Ashanti
Region) 18 December 2002- Professor Clement Dzidonu, Chairman of the National
Information Communication Technology (ICT) Policy and Plan Development
Committee, has said that the deployment of ICT in the society alone would not
facilitate the process of development unless certain critical factors of the
economy are fully addressed.
He said the provision
of appropriate structures like very reliable telephone services and
well-trained and skilful human resource base, were factors crucial to the
application of ICT, saying "without these key factors, it will be
difficult for ICT to make any positive impact on development."
Prof Dzidonu was
speaking on the topic "Ghana's ICT for accelerated development process:
The challenge of our time" at a public lecture organised by the Kwame
Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) in Kumasi on Monday.
The lecture was aimed
at creating a platform for the National ICT Policy and Plan Development Committee
to enlighten the academia of the KNUST more on progress of the plan development
issues of the national ICT policy.
Deans, Heads of
Institutions and Department as well as students from selected second cycle
schools in the Kumasi metropolis attended it.
Prof Dzidonu said
contrary to speculations in certain quarters, the committee was not set up by
government to develop a sectoral ICT policy.
The committee, he
explained, was established to develop "a national ICT-driven
socio-economic development policy and plans that would move Ghana's economy in
the shortest possible time".
Dr Nii Quaynor,
member of the United Nations Information, Communication Technology (UNICT)
taskforce, called on all to embrace ICT since it has become the "pillar to
progress of the individual and any nation".
Prof Kwesi Andam,
Vice Chancellor of the KNUST, said the KNUST had initiated a number of steps to
enable it to benefit from ICT.
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