“NDC
will maintain vigilance at polls”
“We have big role in business development”
Defections hit 31st December Women
Cape Coast
(Central Region) 26 June 2003 - The Cape Cost Police are investigating the
circumstances that led to the death of a 22-year old student of the University
of Ghana, Legon, Nafisatu Ananga, in Cape Coast, and the suspected suicide of
her boyfriend in a hotel room, also in Cape Coast.
Nafisatu’s body
was found in a thicket about 120 metres from her Fourth Ridge residence, lying
in a supine position with bruises around her neck. A source close to Nafisatu
said it suspects that her boyfriend, George Lamptey, 26, killed her and later
hanged himself.
George was said to
have reported at the Aggrey Palace Hotel at 10 a.m. on 23 June 2003 and
registered at the counter as Joy Chuquendu.
The source said
Nafisatu visited George at the hotel at about 12.45 p.m. the same day but did
not meet him.
It said at around
7.30 p.m., George visited the decease at her father’s residence at Fourth Ridge
and invited her out.
According to the
source, Nafisatu did not return home. It said someone who was attending
nature’s call on Tuesday morning found Nafisatu’s body in the bush and raised
an alarm. Sources at the hotel said George returned to his hotel room at about
8.30 p.m. on Monday and did not go out again.
They said the
following morning when there were no signs of him, the door of his room was
forced open and his body was found hanging in the room. The police later
established that he was the one who took Nafisatu out the previous night.
The Central
Regional Police Commander, Patrick Ampewuah, confirmed the story and said marks
of assault were found on Nafisatu’s neck and that it appeared she was
strangled. He said the bodies of the two have been deposited at the Regional
Hospital for autopsy while police investigations continue. – Graphic
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“NDC
will maintain vigilance at polls”
Accra (Greater Accra) 26 June 2003 - The National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Dr Obed Yao Asamoah, has stated that the party is in the process of creating a virile machinery that will deter vote rigging in the next parliamentary and presidential elections.
Even though Dr
Asamoah will not make public the details of the party’s strategies and tactics
at the polling stations during the next polls, he was emphatic that agents of the
NDC will be very vigilant to prevent impersonation and other forms of electoral
malpractice at the 2004 polls.
The NDC national
chairman who stated these in an interview in Accra yesterday pointed out that
indications on the ground point to an NDC victory at the next polls since the
broad masses of the Ghanaian electorate are disillusioned with the economic
policies of the Kufuor administration, which have led to a marked
impoverishment in their living standards.
Dr Asamoah said
the vast majority of people are yearning for the return of the NDC to political
power and it behoves the party to tighten the screws at the various polling
stations dotted across the country to prevent electoral malfeasance and
irregularities by any other political party.
He added that the
party attaches considerable seriousness to the forthcoming voters’ registration
exercise since that will go a long way in determining the outcome of national
elections.
The NDC national
chairman said the party will form teams that will visit registration centres to
monitor the conduct of the exercise which will be carried out by personnel of
the Electoral Commission.
He said to ensure
the effectiveness of the party’s exercise, teams that will be formed will be
composed of people drawn from the various electoral areas in the country since
they are familiar with people living in their respective communities.
Commenting on the
ongoing restructuring of the party machinery Dr Asamoah said the exercise is
being intensified to strengthen the support base of the NDC by maintaining the
existing framework and encouraging those who have reached the voting age of 18
since the last polls, to join its ranks.
Touching on the
financial position of the party, he said the time has come for members and
supporters of the party to make sacrifices to enable the leadership to provide
the various offices and activists logistics that will enhance its chances to
wrest political power from the NPP at the 2004 polls.
Dr Asamoah said
the leadership of the NDC has decided nomination fees that aspiring
parliamentary candidates will deposit with the party, which will be used to
support the branches of the party throughout the country.
He urged the rank
and file of the party to rally behind the leadership in its bid to revamp the
party to clinch victory during the next elections. – Graphic
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Sunyani (Brong
Ahafo) 26 June 2003 - The General -Secretary of the NPP, Dan Botwe, has
emphasised that the party is leaving no stone unturned in its efforts to ensure
a resounding victory in the 2004 general elections.
In this regard, he
has urged the party’s functionaries, supporters and members to be steadfast,
lead exemplary lives and work tirelessly towards the realisation of that noble
objective.
Botwe was
interacting with media personnel in Sunyani at the weekend after addressing the
first of a series of strategic capacity-building workshops organised for
constituency representatives of the NPP in the Brong Ahafo Region.
The training workshop
was aimed at equipping the participants with the necessary skills for them to
train at least 20 trainers in each constituency, who will in turn train the
party’s polling station executives.
Botwe stressed
that the NPP is determined to win a minimum of 140 parliamentary seats,
including all the 21 in the Brong Ahafo Region and not less than 80 per cent of
the presidential votes, in next year’s general elections.
He stated that the
NPP expects stiff opposition from the other political parties, especially the
NDC, so the party’s activists and members should not be swollen-headed but
rather work extra hard to ensure a landslide victory in 2004.
Answering
questions from the press, Botwe said he supports the funding of political
parties by the state to relief them of their financial burden.
He said the
winning of six by-elections by the NPP attests to the fact that the party still
enjoys the goodwill of majority of Ghanaians and gave the assurance that the
party will never disappoint the nation in terms of good governance and the
equitable distribution of development projects.
Touching on what
he termed as unfounded allegation that the media and the NPP government are
bedfellows, Botwe emphasised that media personnel are discharging their
professional duties competently without any harassment or governmental
intervention, unlike the era of the previous regime when government officials
intimidated journalists.
Touching on former
President Jerry John Rawlings’s outbursts, unguarded statements and unnecessary
verbal attacks on the government, the NPP General -Secretary described them as
unfortunate because Rawlings is not behaving as a statesman.
Laud Commey, the
National Organiser of the NPP, commended the people in the region, especially
the foot soldiers of the party, for working hard to ensure victory in the 2000
general elections and urged them to sustain the spirit in order to retain power
at the 2004 polls.
Other speakers at
the function included Mustapha Hamid, the National Youth Organiser of the party,
and Madam Rita Asobayire, the party’s National Women’s Organiser. – Graphic
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Accra (Greater
Accra) 26 June 2003 - The Senior Minister and Leader of the Economic Management
Team, J. H. Mensah has said that government has a major stake in business
development in the country.
He has
subsequently asked stakeholders in the economy to move away from the idea that
government should not take part in business development in the country.
Speaking at the workshop
on “Development of a Medium-term National Private Sector Development Strategy”
in Accra yesterday, he called for greater collaboration between the public and
private sectors to ensure the development of the latter.
The workshop was
organised by the Ministry of Private Sector Development with support from the
Department for International Development (DFID) and Danish Development Agency
(DANIDA).
It attracted
participants from the Private Enterprise Foundation (PEF), financial and
non-financial institutions and other stakeholders from the private sector.
Mensah said
private sector should make known what they expect from government, what that
sector can do, and what government can also do.
The sector
Minister of the Private Sector Development Ministry, Kwamena Bartels, in his
welcome address, stressed the need to look beyond the short term in planning
the development of the private sector.
Such a programme,
he said, will guide the thoughts and actions of stakeholders in helping to
bring to fruition, the President’s vision of the “Golden Age of Business.”
He observed that
the development of every nation depends largely on the participation of the
private sector, adding that the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy proposes
policy change needed to create an enabling environment for an effective private
sector-led growth.
The proposed
policy measures, he said, are in the areas of macroeconomic stability, creation
of new institutions and the restructuring of existing ones as well as
initiating reform of the legal regimes to make them more responsive to the
needs of the private sector.
Bartels said the
present state of the economy shows a convergence between government and the
private sector on the problems facing the economy. “The government believes the
need is to build a shared understanding and appropriate remedial policies,” the
minister said.
The challenge
facing the nation, he said, is to come up with a credible private sector-led
growth strategy that involves all stakeholders, adding “that the strategy
should reflect the vision, not only of all Ministries, Departments and
Agencies, but more importantly of the private sector operators.”
Bartels was
optimistic that at the end of the workshop appropriate answers will be found to
ensure the effective implementation of the strategies evolved at the meeting. –
Graphic
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Junior
Doctors call off strike
Accra (Greater Accra) 26 June 2003 - Junior doctors of Korle Bu Teaching Hospital have called off their intended strike action, which was scheduled to begin on July 1, to press for an increase in their Additional Duty Hours (ADH) allowances. This was the outcome of a meeting held between the management and a cross section of the hospital’s doctors.
A release signed
by the Public Relations Officer of Korle Bu said management made it clear that
the new ADH will be paid based on the new salary at the end of this month. It
said that arrears for April and May would be paid as soon as practicable. – Ghanaian
Times
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Accra (Greater
Accra) 26 June 2003 - At least half a trillion cedis belonging to employees who
will soon be retiring from service has been locked up in loans obtained by
students of tertiary institutions over the last 14 years.
The over ¢500bn
outstanding loans are not only threatening the safe retirement of thousands of
workers but have resulted in the virtual collapse of the Social Security and
National Insurance Trust (SSNIT) Student Loan Scheme. This, among others
factors, has necessitated a review of the scheme announced by the minister in
charge of tertiary education, Ms. Elizabeth Ohene (Graphic of Monday 16 June
2003).
What seems a
considerable consolation for soon-to-retire contributors to the SSNIT fund is a
claim made by the trust that it had invested ¢1.5 trillion of its liquid assets
in treasury bills, bonds and deposits in almost all the banks in the country.
The Daily Graphic
of yesterday quotes public affairs director of the trust, Kwaku Osei-Bimpong,
as assuring that the ¢1.5 trillion, which is the largest pool of liquid assets
to the banks, leaves the issue of the solid finances of the trust in no doubt
since the returns on the investment are positive.
But the fact that
the over ¢500bn outstanding student loans - which is more than a third of the
¢1.5 trillion investments - is a bother to both workers and the SSNIT
authorities, is beyond doubt.
Inquiries at the
public affairs directorate of SSNIT revealed that from the inception of the
loan scheme in 1988 to 1998, only 28% of the amount due was paid. “However, if
we take the total disbursement to date, then only 4% has been repaid,”
Osei-Bimpong, explained.
Asked at what rate
of repayment the loan scheme could have been sustained, he answered that over
50% repayment of the total disbursement would be satisfactory, granting that
the number of students benefiting currently does not increase much.
At the moment,
70,000 out of the about 80,000 students in the universities and other third
cycle schools are enjoying the loans, each taking ¢2m every academic year. The
number of students who have already benefited, the vast majority of who have
defaulted payment, are 154,236 - according to SSNIT records.
But there is every
indication that the number of students asking for loans will continue to
skyrocket, a warning the SSNIT or any trust to replace the SSNIT scheme must
take note of.
At the start of
the current scheme, only the three universities then were existing - University
of Ghana, Legon; Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology and the
University of Cape Coast with a total population of 8,000 students, were
catered for.
The scheme made
room for a 10% yearly increase; a projection which implied that those taking
the loans for this academic year would have been just about 20,000 and not the
70,000 currently on the hands of SSNIT.
Osei-Bimpong
attributes the huge rise in applications for loans to the Free Compulsory
Universal Basic Education and the opening of many senior secondary schools in
the late 1980s. Many undergraduate students emerged and the number of
beneficiary schools has also shot up from four to 37 recently.
Investigations
showed that what makes the fate of workers precarious, as far as the huge
outstanding student’s loan is concerned, is that it is part of the workers’
social security contributions that are given out as the loans.
SSNIT has a
clearly determined amount of its investment portfolio that goes into the
student loan scheme and the trust had single-handedly allocated monies for the
loans for over a decade until the central government, about two years ago,
started supplementing the allocation with some amounts from the Ghana Education
Trust Fund (GETFund).
What this means is
that a lion’s share of the over ¢500 billion unpaid student loans is money
meant to be paid to workers to keep their bodies and souls together between the
age of 60 and death.
Sources at SSNIT
expressed grave fears that if the loans are not paid back or retrieved in time,
a time will soon come when the trust will be too broke to pay pensions.
In a quest for
reasons for the low repayment rate, Chronicle learnt from a handful of
graduates that they had not landed any jobs; some others said, “we are not
gainfully employed.”
It was further
gathered that while thousands of beneficiaries had fled the country for greener
pastures abroad without first settling their loans with the trust, many more
had found employment in Ghana here and were earning salaries, but the loans
were not being deducted by their employers for submission to SSNIT.
In fact, even
though the government remains the biggest employer of tertiary school
graduates, SSNIT has over the years not succeeded in evolving effective
strategies to collect payments of the student loans from government jobs.
The trust reported
that “initial discussions with the Controller and Accountant General” on how to
get the loans deducted at source had just been done last week.
Outside the
government departments, “only a few employers have responded to our request to
make deductions on our behalf,” the director said. The only insurance against a
student’s failure to pay back the loan is surety signed by guarantors for the
students.
But the
outstanding loans, by law, can only be deducted from the guarantor’s social security
fund (SSF) only when they are going on retirement. What that means is that, if
the law is not changed, SSNIT will have to wait for years for guarantors to hit
age 60 before they can be forced to pay the loans back.
The Student Loan
Trust, which is envisaged as a replacement of the SSNIT loan seems to have raised
hopes of many stakeholders. While SSNIT seems eager to wash its hands off the
new schemes, students have welcomed the proposed new loan scheme.
But to save the
new one from going the lane of the current one and two earlier ones before it
operated by Ghana Commercial Bank and SSB Bank, all stakeholders have agreed
that effective means of reclaiming loans must be sought. – Chronicle
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Akuse (Eastern
Region) 26 June 2003 - At the time the nation is on its knees praying for rains
to come for not only food sufficiency but also that the Akosombo dam to reach
an appreciable operational level, a different story is being told at nearby
Akuse in the Eastern region.
Inmates of the
local police cells go on their knees and pray for not only forgiveness of their
sins, but for God to shut the floodgates. The cells, charge office and the
inspector’s office are seriously witnessing leakages like burst pipes. Buckets
of water are usually collected from the cells each time it rains, bringing
untold hardships on both suspects and police personnel at the station.
The Chronicle,
during its investigations, eavesdropped on inmates some on “spiritual fire”
reciting ‘Rain, rain go away and come another day. Little suspects want to
rest.”
The inquisition
has revealed that the Akuse police station was built in 1911, the same time as
the local government hospital and prison, but since then, it has never
witnessed a renovation of any kind.
It is for this
factor that the top of the one-storey building and some offices were abandoned
and have now been taken over by “unfriendly” insects which occasionally invade
the cells and offices as if it is a way of punishment.
Some personnel the
Chronicle undercover investigator spoke to were emphatic that their lives and
those of the inmates are in danger and that each time the clouds form they all
pray for the Lord’s intervention against rain.
The police headquarters,
when contacted, claimed that the situation had not come to their notice but
then they expected the district commander to forward a situation report on the
building for necessary action. – Chronicle
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Accra (Greater
Accra) 26 June 2003 - The dream of the 200 members of Parliament to have
well-furnished offices in their respective district assemblies has fizzled out.
This is because the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development has no
plans to provide them with any.
The members,
according to the Local Government Act 1993 (Act 462), are ex-officio members of
the district assemblies in which their constituencies are situated and as a
general rule, not members of the executive committees of the assemblies which
are responsible for the performance of the executive and administrative
functions of the assemblies.
The minister for
Local Government and Rural Development, Kwadwo Adjei Darko, however explained
that they are by Section 3 of the Local Government regulations of 1995 (LI
1606) members of the district tender boards, which have responsibility on the
awards of contracts.
The minister was
in the House yesterday to answer three questions from members for Kintampo (Yaw
Effah Baafi), Kwabre (Nana Asante Frimpong) and Afram Plains South (Kwakye
Addo).
He explained that
the presence of members of Parliament (MPs) in the assemblies is meant to have
more than symbolic value and that “even if they do not have the right to vote
in the deliberations of the assemblies, they are required to be part of the
supervision and monitoring functions of the assemblies.”
Adjei Darko said
his ministry had initiated moves, about a year ago, to name streets and
re-number all houses in the country. The programme has started within the Accra
Metropolitan area and the Ga district.
The minister said
street naming and house numbering have been completed in Ayawaso, Okaikoi and
Kpeshie sub-metropolitan council areas, all in Accra, adding that the project
is underway in the remaining sub-metropolitan areas.
He explained that
the major problem confronting the assemblies is lack of funds, as the exercise
in Accra alone is estimated to cost over ¢5.4bn. Adjei Darko further explained
that after the successful completion of the project in Accra, it would be
replicated countrywide.
The minister told
the House about efforts to secure financial assistance from Merchant Bank (Gh)
Limited for the provision of pontoons for district assemblies bordering the
Volta Lake. This, he said, would enable people travel safely on the lake and
also boost economic activities in the rural areas.
He said based on
feasibility studies and consultations, Atebubu, Sene, Afram Plains, Kpando and
Krachi districts would each be provided with a boat estimated at about ¢400m. –
Chronicle
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Accra (Greater
Accra) 26 June 2003 – At a time where majority of Ghanaians particularly NDC
activists are claiming that NDC is more united than ever, Chronicle investigations
have it that more of the party’s women are crossing carpet to other political
parties like the NPP.
Chronicle can
report that the distribution of gari processing machines with seed money of ¢50m
to women groups by the government is gradually causing the disbandment of the
31st December Women’s Movement (31st DWM).
The NDC women’s
group was founded by the former First Lady, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings,
claiming to empower women in the country. The red beret group consisted of
traders, teachers and many other professional women believed to be women
empowerment groups.
Meanwhile, they
were to fight the cause of the former President, J.J. Rawlings and his wife
(the founder) and the NDC party.
By so doing, they
were always present at state functions in their red beret to give moral support
to their party (NDC) before the 2000 elections. For Ghanaians to believe that
the 31st DWM, was a women’s empowerment group, the founder, Agyeman Konadu
Rawlings, inaugurated various projects during their time in the name of the
movement as if their welfare was being sought.
Some of the
projects that she even inaugurated included crèches, markets, corn mills, gari
processing factories as well as bead factories throughout the country.
Although the
movement was very strong in the Eastern region, it was stronger in areas such
as Asuogyaman, Yilo Krobo, Manya Krobo, Suhum and New Juaben districts.
An inspection
conducted by the Chronicle in most of these districts shows that almost all the
projects set up by the 31st DWM have collapsed with those manning them nowhere
to be found.
It came out
through an investigation that some members of the movement realized that they
have been deceived after the 2000 general elections so they secretly broke away
from the 31st DWM and formed different groups to fight for the rights of women
campaign against HIV/AIDS in the areas they found themselves in.
Chronicle gathered
that most of these women’s groups have received financial assistance from the
Ghana AIDS Commission to fight against HIV/AIDS as well as take delivery of gari
processing machines with ¢50m as seed money.
In Manya Krobo,
Yilo Krobo, Suhum-Kraboa-Coalter districts, Chronicle observed that the women
are seriously making good use of the machine without doing politics with them.
This programme
being carried by the government through the Ministry of Women and Children’s
Affairs, seems to make next year’s general elections almost an illusion for the
NDC.
Undercover
investigation revealed that most of the women now foot several kilometres from
their various homes to their work place. Those who have crossed carpet too to
NPP have started holding secret meetings with the party executives. Chronicle
hopes they are not doing stomach politics. – Chronicle
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