Speaking at the
launch of the FERD he said while public criticism should be of concern to
government the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service (GES)
should concentrate their efforts to ensuring that the necessary infrastructure,
teaching and administrative competences coupled with a congenial atmosphere to
enhance learning exist and are maintained in the schools.
"Schools which
over-charge will certainly go out of business. If an individual wants a child
to go to a particular private school he must find the money to pay the fees or
go to another school and not complain to the Minister of Education or the Ghana
Education Service (GES)”, he said.
He said FERD has
been formed not to establish a Trade Union to promote sectional interests but
to promote excellence in education by improving quality teaching and learning
in member schools. Twelve schools form the initial members of FERD
GRi.../
Send your comments
to viewpoint@ghanareview.com
Tamale (Greater
Accra) - The Andani gate, one of the two factions in
the Dagbon chieftaincy crisis, has sent a letter to the President rejecting the
findings of the Wuaku Commission set up by the
government to investigate the crisis.
The letter issued
and signed or thumb-printed by 33 persons from the gate, including Kumbunayiri, II, chief of Kumbungu,
expressed outright rejection of the report.
Issah Ketekewu, Deputy
Northern Regional Minister, said this at a Regional Security Council (REGSEC)
meeting with a four-member government delegation led by Brigadier George Aryiku, General Officer Commanding the Northern Command, in
Tamale on Thursday.
The delegation is
to assess the on-the-spot security situation in Dagbon and report to the
government. Ketekewu said the people of Dagbon had
been living in fragile peace since the commission's report was presented to the
government.
"There was a
gun shot at Choggu, a suburb of Tamale, the day
government issued the white paper on the report", he said, adding,
"the security personnel had to rush there to cool down tempers but since
then peace in the area has been threatened."
He appealed to the
government not to lift the state of emergency in Dagbon now because of
provocative acts and utterances being made publicly by some people.
Brigadier Aryiku said
He assured the
people of the government's determination to maintain peace and stability in Dagbon
and called for maximum co-operation from the two gates and all other
stakeholders.
The team would hold
separate talks with the Andanis and religious groups
in Tamale and the Abudus at Nanton
on Thursday. It would also visit Yendi on Friday to
hold similar meetings with the District Security Committee, the Kuga-Na and the
Abudus.
GRi.../
Send your comments
to viewpoint@ghanareview.com
Accra (Greater
Accra) 10 January 2003- Vice President Aliu Mahama on Thursday handed over 300
double cabin pick-ups, which forms part of 450 vehicles and 200 motor cycles,
to the Minister of Health to improve rural health delivery services and reduce
poverty.
The vehicles worth
6.3 million dollars were procured under the Donor Health Fund. At a ceremony at
the CFAO offices in Accra, where the government took delivery of the vehicles,
Vice President Mahama announced that the rest of the vehicles, comprising 83
saloon cars, 20 station wagons, 13 haulage trucks 20 buses and two cold vans,
would be delivered by the end of March, this year.
Additionally, 200
motorcycles and six motorboats are expected at the same time. Vice President
Mahama said 250 pick-ups would be distributed to district hospitals and health
centres, while the saloon cars would be allocated to doctors and other health
professionals, particularly in the rural areas.
He said:
"Seventy percent of the saloon cars have been earmarked as staff
allocation to attract and retain health workers to under-serve in deprived
areas in the country." Vice President Mahama said with the support of
OPEC, the government had acquired 16 Nissan pick-ups and 32 motorbikes under
the Rural Health Service Project.
Under the same
project and with the assistance of OPEC, he said four Nissan pick-ups and two
Nissan patrols had been purchased for outreach services in Oral Health Care.
Vice President
Mahama said some of the vehicles would be given to Ghana Poverty Reduction
Strategy-linked deprived areas in the three Northern and the Central regions to
increase spatial mobility of health workers and the movement of critical
supplies of needy areas.
He expressed
government's commitment to make a difference in the governance of the country
and in the lives of the people.
"We are
determined to show that even with the limited resources at our disposal, it is
possible to bring tangible improvement to the critical areas such as health,
education and security," he said.
Vice President Mahama
urged the Health Ministry to monitor the vehicles to ensure that they were used
for their intended purpose and to embark on regular maintenance programmes to
keep them in good condition.
Robert Grant,
Managing Director of CFAO, said the company had the facilities and capacity to
maintain the vehicles. He said the Company, a member of the Ghana Investors
Advisory Council, had since 2001 invested two million Euros in
In an interview
with the Ghana News Agency (GNA), Mr Moses Dani Baah, Deputy Minister of Health, said the vehicles would
greatly enhance efficiency and cut down cost of maintaining vehicles, which
were between 10 and 15 years old.
He said haulage
trucks would transport drugs from the Central Medical Stores to the regional
and other stores, while the bicycles and motorboats would access the most
difficult areas. "The coverage of immunisation and disease control would
be more efficiently managed in the rural areas with the vehicles," he
said.
GRi.../
Send your comments
to viewpoint@ghanareview.com
They are Dr
Anane-Frempong Asafo-Agyei, medical director of Asafo-Agyei Hospital in Kumasi, Dr Adolph Kwesi Takyi, Medical Director of
the Akpenamawu Clinic at Ho and Dr Daniel Carl Sonne, Principal Medical Officer, Korle Bu Polyclinic,
Accra.
A release issued
and signed in
According to the
release, Dr Sonne has been suspended for six months
with effect from
"Dr Sonne is therefore, disqualified from practicing medicine
for the period of his suspension and the general public is to take note",
the release said.
Dr Asafo-Agyei was also fined 10 million cedis for
distributing leaflets and booklets at the second Clinical conference organized
by the Ashanti Regional Health Administration in June 2001 after he had been
warned by the Ashanti Regional branch of the Ghana Medical Association the year
before.
According to the
release, Dr Asafo Agyei's
conduct sought to promote his personal capabilities in the treatment of
haemorrhoids and it was calculated to attract business unfairly.
Dr Takyi,
was also fined one (1) million cedis for administering a concoction of six
eggs, a bottle of F.A.C. and akpeteshie to one Mr Goka Kwajo, a patient who was on
admission at his clinic on
Dr Takyi, on 26 January informed the relatives of the said
patient that he was dead under the pretext of getting them to pay for the
outstanding hospital bills of the patient.
The family of Kwajo however, brought a coffin for the alleged corpse but
Dr Takyi permitted members of the public to witness
the unsavoury incident. Members of the public who wanted to catch a glimpse of
the patient were made to pay fees by the doctor.
Dr Takyi was however found guilty of infamous conduct in a
professional respect and has been directed by the committee to insert an
apology in the 'Ghanaian Times', the paper that first published the incident
within a week.
He should also
negotiate with the relatives of the patient to settle the cost incurred in the
process of collecting the non-existent corpse. All the three doctors were
represented by counsel and found guilty of the offences.
According to the
release, the Council had examined 15 cases referred to it since January 2001
and 13 of them were referred to its Disciplinary Committee. The cases were
examined and five disposed of.
GRi.../
Send your comments
to viewpoint@ghanareview.com
It said under the
present leadership the Central Committee was to initiate policies and establish
an education unit to educate members and propagate the party's principles and
ideologies but it had "veered away from its key functions and turned into
a conference of civil service administrative department operating general orders."
"The
leadership shows no focus. The tendency has been to lord it as a managing
director of a company using divisionism and destructive tactics forgetting what
Nkrumah's democratic centralism means, namely that, it is the party which is
supreme, not any individual comrade,'' the branch said in a statement.
It was read at a
news conference by the Regional Chairman of the party, Osei Tutu Bonsu in
The statement said
for effective leadership the Central Committee which comprised representatives
from the regions, must position itself to be the medium for harnessing ideas
and consolidating them into decisions and policies.
It must be in the
forefront for a dynamic push to obtain a fruitful impact on the voting public.
It attributed the inability of the party to hold national delegates congress to
the "inertia and irrelevancy which have characterised party organs at the
top" and said the CPP had a lot of work to do by way of grass-root
organisation and injection of a new lease of life into the leadership.
The statement
appealed to all regional executives and the rank and file of the party to use
the commemoration of the Positive Action to show concern and meet to consider
pertinent issues.
It said the
The statement
welcomed the policies of the NPP government on property-owning democracy and
the return of confiscated assets to their rightful owners and appealed for the
return of the party's buildings that had been confiscated to the state.
It gave the
assurance that the CPP was not dead. "It is a political sleeping
giant. The Ashanti CPP will work
unceasingly towards the waking up of the party to win power in 2004.''
GRi.../
Send your comments
to viewpoint@ghanareview.com
Osei Tutu Bonsu,
He was addressing a
press conference to mark the 53rd anniversary of the Positive Action declared
by Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah to herald the attainment
of independence in 1957.
"This trait is
exhibited in attitudes towards tribe and in the habit of tribal
characterisation of individual who is either commended or condemned," he
noted.
Bonsu said the identification of oneself with a
particular party to cloud one's power of reasoning, analysis and assessment and
the resultant creation of political tension in the Ghanaian society now was
worse than the colonial scourge.
He said state power
had become life and gold and the struggle for it tended to set the political
parties on a warpath that had affected peace and development of the nation.
Bonsu called on Ghanaians to condemn political
party feuding, the creation of tension through intemperate utterances and the
destructive criticism that had the effect of polarizing the Ghanaian society.
He called on
Ghanaians to come together to take positive action for the total elimination of
all negative life emerging in society and desist from acts of divisiveness and
tribalism.
GRi.../
Send your comments
to viewpoint@ghanareview.com