Accra (Greater
Accra) 07 February 2003- An Accra Fast Track Court hearing the case of the
divestiture of Ghana Rubber Estates Limited (GREL) on Thursday adjourned
proceedings to Wednesday, 12 February.
The presiding judge
Justice J. C. Amonoo-Monney, an Appeal Court Judge
with an additional responsibility on the matter as a High Court Judge, stated
that it had come to his notice that the Director of Public Prosecutions and one
of the defence counsel were to appear before another Court at the same time.
Justice Amonoo-Monney said the court had no alternative than to adjourn
the case to enable counsel to appear for their clients at the other court. Four
persons are standing trial for their alleged involvement in bribery and corrupt
practices during the privatisation of GREL.
They are Hanny Sherry Ayittey, treasurer of the 31st December
Women's Movement, Emmanuel Amuzu Agbodo,
former executive secretary of the Divestiture Implementation Committee, Ralph Casely-Hayford, a businessman and Sati Dorcas Ocran, a housewife. They have all pleaded not guilty to the
charges and have each been granted self-recognisance bail.
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Accra (Greater
Accra) 07 February 2003- The Ghana Water Company Limited (GWCL) has denied and
condemned media report that people in Accra east were being supplied with
untreated water from Kpone Headworks
via Ashiaman and Opkonglo
booster stations.
It described as
untrue and baseless the report in the Ghanaian Chronicle newspaper, which
alleged that Kpone and the two Booster stations at Ashiaman and Opkonglo had ran short of water treatment chemicals.
The paper said in
its Tuesday edition that as a result lack of chemicals, the headworks,
from the booster stations has been producing and transmitting water without
chlorinating for the past five months.
A visit to the Kpone Headworks on Thursday with
journalists to ascertain the problem indicated that the GWCL had more than
enough of the various chemicals used in treating the water including calcium
hydrochloride.
Charles Tulashie, the Chemist Bacteriologist at the Kpone headwork said he was dismayed when he heard the
report because they never run short of any chemical the whole of last year.
He said, "at the moment we have in store 159 calcium hydrochloride
apart from the other substitutes such as bleaching powder and chlorine gas
which are use interchangeably because they all serve the same purpose".
Tulashie said every week the unit sends report to
the head office on the chemical stock level at the headworks,
which would make it very difficult for them to run short. "Besides there
was no way we could transmit or supply water without treating it at the headworks, we know its implications."
He explained that
every hour they conduct an analysis to check the bacteria, residual chlorine as
well as other chemical such the calcium hydrochloride, iron, magnesium among
others.
Jonas Jabulo, Acting Chief Manager of the Water Quality Assurance
said the Chronicle was also wrong to state that post chlorination were being
done at the booster station. He said they were always done at the headworks, adding, "what
happens at the booster stations is different, besides we only apply chemicals
at that level when we realize that there have been a number of repairs on the
pipes at the area."
Jabulo said the chlorinators at the Okponglo and Ashiaman which were
damaged as of now, as the paper pointed out, were just back-ups and therefore,
were use only in the situation described above. "Currently we do the
application of the chlorine manually at the two stations and there has never
been any problem with it," he said.
The fourth quarter
report of the Kpone treated and distribution water
evaluation copied the press shows that all headworks
in the country achieved 100 per cent water quality production and supply.
These included the
water turbidity, colour, residual chlorine, faecal Coliform
and taste and odour. At the GWCL Central Stores where they keep all chemicals
before they were distributed to the various stations countrywide, Kofi Quarshie, Acting Stores Manager took journalists round and
showed them excess stored of the various chemicals.
He said at present
they have in store 264 bleaching powder, 222 Calcium
hydrochloride and 59-chlorine gas that could sustain the entire country
for the next month before the arrival of the next consignment.
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Professor David Ofori-Adjei, Director of the Institute, told reporters at
the launch of the initiative in
This, he said,
would be possible by applying effective and affordable strategies that are
supportive by the health systems and communities. IMPACT, a global research
initiative to provide rigorous evidence of the effectiveness and cost
effectiveness of safe motherhood intervention strategies and their implications
for equity and sustainability, will also focus on
Ultimately, eight
developing countries in
The initiative in
He said many women
die from pregnancy-related complications that could be prevented. In
The maternal
mortality rate is now 600 per 100,000 live births. The Director noted that the
there was no accurate data on maternal mortality thereby making it impossible to
design any effective interventions to address the problem.
He therefore called
for the expansion of health care activities that would respond to the real
needs of the people. Prof. Ofori-Adjei said the
initiative would create linkages with hospitals, constituent schools of
Mrs Wendy Freeman,
coordinator of the IMPACT, said to bridge the evidence gap of reducing maternal
mortality, issues like misconception, lack of access to health services, delay
in seeking medical attention and affordability should be addressed.
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Tema (Greater
Accra)
"The maternal
mortality rate, which is 120 times higher than that of
The project, which
would have modern delivery facilities to make childbirth comfortable and safe,
would be completed in year 2004. Prof. Badu-Akosah
said childbirth mortality is a tragedy and expressed surprise that expectant
mothers who religiously go through antenatal care lose their lives.
He said the
Ministry of Health was determined to offer quality and efficient service and
therefore, not avers with the private sector in the provision of quality care.
People should contribute to help provide basic quality health care, he said.
Dr Deborah Cubagee, Director of Health of the GHS, expressed the hope
that the project, when completed, would help reduce the alarming maternal mortality
rate. Mrs Georgina Kumah, a philanthropist, who had
earlier donated 160 million cedis worth of equipment and items to the Tema
General Hospital entreated health workers to offer efficient services to
patients.
She said this,
however, requires adequate manpower resource and education to keep them abreast
with medical, nursing and midwifery practices that are changing rapidly. Health
workers have a responsibility to engage in efficient dialogue with patients and
the public they are paid to serve, she said.
Nii Adjei Kraku II,
Tema Mantse, stressed that maternal mortality should
be a thing of the past and called for the provision of modern facilities at
maternity centres to save the lives of mothers.
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Accra (Greater
Accra) 07 February 2003- Ex-police sergeant, Joseph Kwadjo
Nuer, on Thursday got members of the National
Reconciliation Commission (NRC) and others present at the hearing laughing when
he said he had used a document, which could have served as evidence of his
allegations of torture as toilet paper.
He was answering a
question posed by Mrs Sylvia Boye, a member of the
Commission, on the whereabouts of a leave letter he claimed to have received
from his boss, one Adenu, after being tortured and
hospitalized by armed military men on the eve of the 4 June 1979 uprising.
"My Lord, in
the course of time, I thought I was never going to have the opportunity for
redress and my economic situation was not the best so I used that letter and
other documents as toilet papers."
He said in recent
times Adenu, his former boss at the Police Striking
Force Unit, who gave him the letter asking him to go on leave for three months,
has dissociated himself from his (Nuer's) torture.
"But I do not
have that letter Adenu wrote and signed to show as
evidence of his awareness of my plight." Nuer
told the Commission that on 3 June 1979, he and three others, Corporal Yeboah,
Sergeant Dapah, both drivers and Contable
Asubonteng, all of the Police Striking Force, were
detailed to witness a post-mortem on the body of an armed robber who died in a
shootout.
He said they were
instructed to dress in mufti and were given a civilian vehicle with
registration number GZA 8832 to hide their identities. This was because there
was information that a group of armed robbers was going to show up at the Korle
Bu Teaching Hospital mortuary to claim the body of their dead colleague.
"When we got
to the mortuary the doctors said for fear of the armed robbers they had postponed
the post-mortem to an unspecified date, so we left and headed back to the
office through the Makola Market area in
Nuer said when they got to Makola
Market, they saw a military vehicle full of armed soldiers and they were asked
to stop. The soldiers then ordered them to come out with their hands up.
He said the
soldiers interrogated them and they disclosed their identity as policemen but
the soldiers did not believe them and started beating them up. "In the
process, my three other colleagues managed to escape and I was left alone with
the soldiers who striped me naked, collected my pistol with eight rounds of
ammunitions and asked me scale a nearby wall."
Nuer said the soldiers told him that day was his
last day on earth and that if he looked back he would be shot dead. He
attempted to look back and a bullet was shot, which brushed his forehead and he
fell.
He said they then
took him to the street and drove their vehicle over his leg and he became
unconscious. "I was revived at the
Nuer said at the time information had reached
his superiors and colleagues that he was dead but they later got to know he was
alive and Adenu, granted him three months leave to recover.
He said he resumed
work and after a year-and-a-half, his pistol, which the soldiers sized, was
retrieved from an armed robber during an operation at Tesano
in
Nuer said one of his colleagues, Ohene Ansah, was assigned among
other things, to investigate the murder of the three judges and the retired
army Major. He said in the course of Ansah's duty he
(Ansah) felt his life was in danger.
"Ansah approached me and told me he was being trailed so he
handed over some documents containing some evidence that could lead to the
arrest of the culprits for safe keeping.” "The evidence variously named
vehicles used and people who were involved in the plot and murder."
Nuer read portions of the document Ansah gave him, saying that they were written in Ansah's own hand-writing and they were the notes of
investigation he was carrying out. He said on
"On my way to Kpedze around
"They then
searched my car and found a file Ansah gave to me
containing some other documents in the trunk so they arrested me and sent me to
Gondar Barracks." He said at the barracks he was
put in a military cell and beaten with a hammer-like weapon. His head was hit
against the wall several times until the soldiers got to know he was not Ansah before letting him go.
Nuer said when he came out of the military
cells, where he saw blood stains all over the walls, the tyres and battery of
his car had been removed. He went home on foot and later brought second hand
tyres and battery to replace them. "When I reported to my superiors they
did virtually nothing about it."
Nuer said in the course of time he bought the
body of a vehicle from Kokompe market in
"Whilst the
case was in court, former President J. J. Rawlings came on air and announced
the names of 49 police personnel including mine having been dismissed," he
said. "I was found guilty of stealing the Justice's car and sentenced to
18 years in prison."
He said he was
taken to Nsawam and whilst there he was served with
his dismissal letter. Nuer said he appealed against
his imprisonment and after six years, eight months his appeal was upheld and he
was released on
He said currently
his right leg, over which the vehicle was driven, is shorter than the left one,
adding that he has developed a waist problem because of that. Nuer said his wife has divorced him on the ground that he
was going mad as a result of the torture.
The members of the
Commission consoled him for the ordeal he went through and urged him to forgive
his persecutors. General Emmanuel Erskine
and Maulvi Wahab Adam, both
members of the Commission, advised security officers to desist from carrying
sensitive and highly classified documents on them in town to avoid the danger
of being attacked by interested persons. They also suggested that when
security personnel are on undercover operations, they should carry some form of
identity to avoid being mistaken for anti-social characters.
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Accra (Greater
Accra) 07 February 2003- Ex-Lance Corporal Godwin Wegudi
Ayiworoh is still struggling to understand why he was
picked up in 1985 and detained for more than seven years.
Moreover, he is
still at a loss why the Ghana Army has not paid him seven years salary prior to
his discharge from the Armed Forces in 1992. When the National Reconciliation
Commission (NRC), sitting in
Ex-Lance Corporal Ayiworoh told the Commission that he was detained for seven
years at Nsawam Prisons prior to his discharge from
the Service in 1992. However, he was not paid any salary although he was
regarded as a serving soldier for the period he was in incarceration.
The ex-soldier,
then stationed at the Mortar Regiment at Ho, said on
He said he was
driven by one Brigadier Klutse to
At the BNI, the
ex-corporal said, he was never interrogated, neither was he made to write any
statement. He was sent to a cell where he met the late Tommy Thompson, one time
publisher of the Free Press newspaper, one George Adjei and Seidu
Iddrisu.
Ex-Corporal Ayiworoh said at the BNI, the soldiers used knives to cut
the backs of detainees. After four months detention at the BNI some of the
detainees were released, but he and Seidu were rather
handcuffed and sent to Nsawam Prisons, where he spent
seven years.
Ayiworoh said while in prison a warder named John Attipoe slapped him and in a struggle that ensued, the
warder bit him. Ayiworoh said he together with other
prisoners went on hunger strike, but he collapsed on the fifth day and came
around only in the Prisons Clinic, where he saw that he was being given
intravenous infusion.
The Ex-Lance
Corporal said he found it difficult to understand his incarceration and was
furious when he learned that he had been pardoned under an Executive
Instrument.
Ayiworoh said he spent more than 14 years in the
Army, but was only given 600,000 cedis as benefit after petitioning the Ghana
Army. He said he is not on pension. Now in his mid-forties, he said he has
neither a wife nor a child.
Setrana said at the BNI office he was made to sit
at the reception from
He said Nanfuri asked him questions about Amewordeh's
business, relationship with some military personnel and his whereabouts, adding
that he had no answers to all these questions.
"I was then
brought back to the reception and made to sit there till
Setrana said at the barracks he was taken to a dark
room in which there was a tall wall beyond which one could not see and there he
was interrogated and tortured by three masked soldiers.
"They took off
my shirt and vest, tied my hand to a chair and one of the soldiers who was an
officer asked me the same questions Nanfuri asked me
whilst the other two whipped my back with iron rods merciless till blood
started oozing from my back."
He said he was kept
in a room where there was light for 24 hours over a period of three and half
weeks, adding that during that period he slept on a hard board.
Setrana said later Captain Pattington
came and asked the soldiers whether they had got any information from him. He
said Captain Pattington was told he did not have
answers to the questions so he ordered them to bring him to his office.
He said when he got
to Pattington's office he was let go with his bruises
on his back and an impaired vision because of the room where there was light
permanently. "I never thought I would be alive to tell my story, but I
thank God this government has made that possible through the NRC," he
said.
"Two years
ago, I sent a petition to the Commission on Human Rights and Administrative
Justice (CHRAJ) and I am still awaiting the result. "Meanwhile
my friend who heard of my arrest and absconded to
Jacob Kwao Baiden, a former fire
officer, on his part told the Commission that he was picked by a group of
soldiers in "
He said at the
barracks, the soldiers shaved him with broken bottles and ordered him into a
large room, which looked like a bonded warehouse, with about 20 people in it.
He said the soldiers asked him to undress.
Baiden said the room looked very scary with a lot
of bullet marks and bloodstains all over the walls, and he felt very
uncomfortable. He said when he asked the soldiers what his offence was they
ordered him to shut up.
Baiden said he was made to hold his ears and jump
many times, whipped with twisted wire and warned not to shed tears in his
pains. Any time he asked about his offence, the soldiers tortured him more, he
said, adding that the beating left a cut on his right arm.
Baiden said the soldiers made him roll over the
floor, from the morning they picked him till 1200 hours. They then asked him to
jump while holding his male organ. He said he also obliged to their order to
drink his urine.
Baiden said he was very tired, but the soldiers
gave him a cutlass and asked him to weed. He obliged and weeded till 1700
hours. He was later marched into the room, which looked like a warehouse and he
had to grope to find his shirt.
He said the next
morning, another soldier relieved the first one and he also made him weed. When
he asked for food, he was asked what rights he had to ask a soldier to give him
food.
Baiden said he gave 10 cedis to a soldier to buy
him some "waakye", but the soldier brought
neither the food nor the money. Rather he was ordered to chew gravel. He said
he tried but could not chew it.
Baiden said at about 1600 hours, when they were in
the large room, he showed his identity card to another soldier and he told him
his case was not serious.
He said on the
third day, another soldier arrived, called his name and ordered him out. He was
marched to a room marked CO, where he met the Welfare Officer of his fire
station and their driver.
Baiden said the Commanding Officer brought his
identity card out, gave it to the Welfare Officer and apologised to him (Baiden), saying "We're sorry. You're lucky."
He said after his
release, he felt pains when urinating and even urinated
blood for some time and sought treatment at the Korle bu
Teaching Hospital. Maulvi Wahab
Adam, along with the other commissioners, expressed sympathy to Baiden for his ordeal and said the quick response of the
welfare officer of the Fire Service to the plight of their colleague was an
example worthy of emulation by organisations.
Baiden requested that Government should ensure
that civilians were not sent to Gondar Barracks.
Madam Susuanna Ohenewah Korlettey of Santa Maria, who used to deal in second hand
clothing, said in 1982, a soldier diverted the course of an Nsawam-bound
bus on which she and her son travelling to El Wak
Stadium where they were flogged.
She said the
soldiers accused them of paying above the approved fare. Ohenewah
said she developed hypertension from that traumatic experience and she also
stopped her trading.
She said a
Ohenewa, now with four children, said that her
husband died from excessive worry over the loss of the bus, and she depended on
benefactors to take care of her children.
General Emmanuel Erskine, a commissioner, described the events of the maltreatment
of women as a shameful past and said never should that happen again.
He expressed the
hope that Ohenewah would forgive the perpetrators and
look with hope into the future. Dr Sylvia Awo Mansa Boye, another commissioner,
said although there were rumours of maltreatment during the revolutionary
years, Ohenewah's story showed that they were true.
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"There is no
doubt that the appointment is a fitting recognition of Ghana's enviable record
of enduring atmosphere of peace and stability," a statement signed by Nii Noi Dowuona,
General Secretary of the Party, said in Accra.
The statement said
the CPP believes that President Kufuor's commitment
and regular participation in the affairs of the sub-regional body played a
decisive role in his appointment.
"It is
therefore a personal and national honour." It said there was no doubt the
President was taking up that responsibility against a backdrop of intra and
inter national conflicts, fratricidal wars and threats to the fledgling
democracy in some member countries.
"The fight to
arrest the weak economies coupled with the tortuous road to full sub-regional
integration remains an unfulfilled agenda, which threatens also regional
stability and the hopes and aspirations of our people."
The CPP said it is
conscious of the fact that all those problems could not be resolved within the
tenure of President Kufuor's Chairmanship.
"Nevertheless, with the goodwill and active support of the other leaders,
we are confident that President Kufuor will rise to the occasion and meet the
challenges of the task ahead."
The CPP said it
would remain steadfast in the fight for social and economic justice for the
people of
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Accra (Greater
Accra) 07 February 2003- President John Kufuor has nominated Salifu Waah, a teacher, for approval as the District Chief
Executive of the Sissala District Assembly.
A letter signed by Kwadwo
Baah-Wiredu, Minister of the Local Government and Rural Development, on
Thursday said the nomination of Waah was by virtue of the Constitution and the Local
Government Act 1993, Act 462.
The letter copied
to the Secretary of the District Co-ordinating Director, Sissala
District, the Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Kwadwo Afari
Djan, and the regional Minister said the President by
that virtue has asked that Waah should be placed
before the Sissala District Assembly for approval.
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In a statement
reacting to a letter the Minister of Information and Presidential Affairs, Jake
Obetsebi-Lamptey wrote accusing Professor John Evans Atta Mills, NDC
presidential candidate for 2004 elections for propagating ethnicity.
The statement said
the NDC also has an experience well vested leader to lead the party to rule the
nation. It said; "If Ghanaians are quiet does not mean they do not know
what is good for them but, they would decide at the appropriate time."
It said Prof Mills
would not bring ethnicity into the country, "adding that the speculation
of flyers to the public was the practical demonstration that the NPP government
had deceived Ghanaians resulting in the unbearable situation which students
found themselves.
The statement said
the Minister's letter was uncalled for and that his understanding of the
leaflets depicted the style of politics, which would rather bring about ethnic
division and would raise tension.
"The NPP has
the history of destroying political parties that seem to be strong opposition
to the party and even when they were in opposition they did worse things and
demonstrated against the two and a half per cent increment in Value Added Tax
which is the source of the GETFund that they were
using."
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Accra (Greater
Accra) 07 February 2003- Naval Captain Assasie-Gyimah
(Rtd) on Thursday petitioned the National
Reconciliation Commission (NRC) to give him the opportunity to appear before it
to clear some issues in which witnesses accused him of abusing their human
rights.
He said in a
13-point petition that he was pleading with the Commission "to give me the
opportunity which I thought was my right to listen to the story of Private Twumhene, subject him to cross-examination and state my own
case for the truth to be known by all."
Capt. Assasie-Gyimah said the opportunity extended to E.T. Baba
to appear before the Commission during the previous sitting to face his accuser
questioned him and telling his side of the story should as well extended to
him.
He explained;
"On the 27 November 2002, I received a letter NRC/14/128 from the Director
of Investigations of National Reconciliation Commission inviting me to report
to the Director to assist in investigations into a matter in which according to
him my name was mentioned.
"I complied
with the request and submitted a written statement to him on either
"It had been
my prayer that the Commission would invite me together with Private Twumhene for him to narrate my involvement in the alleged
abuses of his human rights in my presence.
That would have enabled me to ask him questions if any in order to establish
the truth or otherwise of his allegations."
He said one
Corporal Stanley Obeng Otchere
who appeared before the Commission, as a witness for Private Twumhene was "the same Otchere
I had identified in my earlier statement to the Commission as one of the
soldiers who molested the suspects among whom was Twumhene."
Assasie-Gyimah said he saved both Otchere and Twumhene from
"the wrath of their soldier colleagues and I therefore deserve their
gratitude rather than vilification from these two ex-soldiers.
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