No tension in Military - Defence Ministry
WAEC urged to publish results of BECE probe
Trader jailed 10 years for sodomy
Ghanaian midwife wins international award
Seventy-nine suspects arrested in swoop bailed
Students appeal for measures to curb conflicts
Five arrested for possessing arms in Dagbon area
Rainstorm displaces people in Tolon-Kumbungu District
Minister attends first OAU drug control conference
Malian President to visit Ghana
The President should have fired the National Security Heads
Forty-seven to contest 17 seats in Sekondi
Accra (Greater Accra) 15 May 2002 - The Ministry of Defence (MOD), on Monday described as false and malicious a publication by an Accra daily, Ghanaian Democrat, that there was tension in the military over the supply of clothing.
The Ministry said in a statement that the publication, headlined "Tension in Burma Camp", was an attempt to incite members of the Armed Forces against the government, adding' "The subject matter of this headline seeks to create the erroneous impression that there is mounting crisis in Burma Camp as a result of soldiers being denied clothing".
The statement signed by Lt. Col. E. W. K. Nibo, Director of Public Relations, explained that items such as 10,000 pairs of olive green uniforms, 5,800 pairs of combat boots and 1,200 ballistic helmets among several others were purchased for personnel of the Armed Forces in 2001.
Others were 5,000 pairs of camouflage uniforms, 1,200 pairs of socks, 2,000 combat jackets, 2,000 raincoats, 2,000 sleeping bags and 1,200 fragmentation jackets. It said troops serving with missions outside the country were also supplied not only with uniforms but also with other military gear to ensure their safety and comfort.
The statement said: "We wish to further inform the general public that even in our current economic situation Ghana Armed Forces have on order for this year 10,000 pairs of uniforms, 8,000 pairs of combat boots, 12,000 pairs of socks and 5,000 pairs of camouflage uniforms.
"We must indicate that this has been our routine for servicing of troops over the years and it is therefore very wrong to impute that for the past 15 months no supplies of uniforms have been made.
"It is unfortunate for the Democrat to quote an imaginary source in the MOD that peace keeping duties come once in a while and do not impact so much on their lives". The statement expressed the gratitude of the Armed Forces to the government for the recent increases in the peacekeeping operational allowances, which they had been asking for some years now.
On the allegation of politically motivated mass transfers in the army, the statement said postings within the Armed Forces was a normal practice dictated by operational and administrative agencies.
"It must be noted that postings and deployment of troops are the responsibility of service commanders," it said and added that at a time when the nation was confronted with problems such as armed robberies and other forms of armed conflict, commanders could deploy their troops as they see fit and a whole inter-battalion rotations could be undertaken when it became necessary.
The statement therefore advised media personnel to contact the Public Relations Directorate for clarification of such delicate and sensitive issues, and said sensational headlines only undermined the authority and discipline of the Ghana Armed Forces.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 15 May 2002 - Hearing of a writ by Mr Tsatsu Tsikata, former Chief Executive of the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation (GNPC) against the Chief Justice (CJ) and the Attorney General over the composition of the Supreme Court for the review of the court's decision on the illegality of the Fast Track High Court, was on Tuesday adjourned to 22 May.
At a brief sitting of the court, a panel of five judges, comprising, Mr Justice A.K.B. Ampiah (presiding), Mrs Justice Sophia Akufo, Mr Justice George Acquah, Mr William Atuguba and Mr Justice George Lamptey, adjourned the hearing without assigning any reasons.
Mr Tsikata on 28 March, this year, filed a writ challenging the C.J. on the true and correct interpretation of Article 133(2) of the 1992 Constitution, that there is no constitutional requirement to increase from nine to 11, the number of panel members to hear the review of the decision of the Supreme Court.
The writ also declared that the true and correct interpretation of Article 133 (2) of the 1992 Constitution, except in the case of a decision by a panel of five Justices of the Supreme Court, says there is no requirement for the C.J. to add two additional Justices of the Supreme Court, to hear an application for the review of the decision of the Court.
Professor E.V.O Dankwa, counsel for the plaintiff has however, written a letter to the Supreme Court reminding it to adhere to the provision which request at least 14 days of short listing before hearing.
The letter invoked the provision of Rule (23) of the Supreme Court Rule, 1996. C.I. 16, which requires that " the registrar shall, during each term, publish within the precincts of the court and of the High Court of justice in each region, at least 14 days before hearing, a shortlist of cases which shall show the criminal and civil appeals of matters that are to be heard by the court. Professor Dankwa, who is out of the country now, requested that this provision be complied with, to enable him to present his client in court.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 15 May 2002 - The Ghana National Association of Private Schools (GNAPS) on Tuesday asked the West African Examination Council (WAEC) to publish the report on the investigations into leakage of the recent Basic Education
Certificate Examination (BECE).
"Such an action will go a long way to lessen the pains the students, parents and guardians are going through following the alleged leakage of the examination questions", a statement in Accra signed by Dr Kwame Nkrumah, Acting GNAPS President, said. The statement said the association's request was in response to "the immense pressure from concerned parents".
It reminded WAEC of the anguish the 264,957 affected candidates, their parents and other stakeholders were going through, saying, "Worried stakeholders of this BECE are very anxious to know the repercussions of this leakage in case there is need for a re-sit." The statement said apart from disrupting the year's academic calendar such an option was very costly in terms of the time and resources put in by the teachers, students and parents in preparing for the examination.
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Asamankese (Eastern Region) 15 May 2002 - An Asamankese Circuit Court has sentenced an Accra-based trader, Kofi Boafo to 10 years' imprisonment for sodomizing two 13 year-old school boys.
Boafo, who pleaded guilty to defilement, was said to have had "unnatural carnal knowledge" of the two boys at Asikasu, near Asamankese. Police Inspector Mariama Doreya told the court that between 18 and 19 April. Boafo, who arrived at Asikasu to buy sugarcane, met the two boys and befriended them.
She said Boafo invited the boys into his room and promised to buy them a bicycle each. "He undressed them, applied pomade to their anus and his male organ before having carnal knowledge of them." The boys informed their parents about their ordeals and a complaint was lodged with the Police, the Prosecutor said.
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Koforidua (Eastern Region) 15 May 2002 - A Senior Midwife of the Koforidua Regional Hospital, Miss Cecilia Anna Asare has won this year's Marie Goubran Memorial Award organised by the International Confederation of Midwives (ICM). The triennial award, which goes with 4,000 Euros and a certificate, was presented to Miss Asare at the ICM's triennial conference in Vienna, Austria, on 14 April, this year.
It was instituted by the parents of the late Marie Goubran, a former Secretary General of the Confederation, to promote midwifery education and practice in Africa. As a show of solidarity with their sister-in-Christ, the Koforidua-Adweso St Dominic Parish branch of the Christian Mothers Association (CMA), presented Miss Asare with a parcel at a thanksgiving church service on Sunday, which also coincided with the celebration of the International Mothers Day.
Miss Asare, who qualified as a Nurse in 1966 and became a Midwife in 1974, is currently a Senior Nursing Officer in-charge of the Maternity Ward of the Koforidua Regional Hospital. Since 1990, she had also been a national trainer of midwives in life saving skills in Midwifery and Safe Motherhood Clinical skills.
Speaking to the Ghana News Agency, Miss Asare said she won the competition with her curriculum vitae detailing her duties and achievements so far and what she would utilise the amount accompanying the award for.
She said she intended to use the 4,000 Euros to conduct a project in four selected health centres at Assin Kushea, Praso, Jaikai and Awusem, to help to improve the reproductive health services in the area and enhance the prevention of maternal and infant mortality and morbidity. She said she was dedicating the award to God, her parents and colleagues "who made it possible for me to win this prestigious award."
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Accra (Greater Accra) 15 May 2002 - The Trades Union Congress (TUC) has appealed to employers to give an over-riding consideration to workers' health and safety at their occupational places to ensure their maximum output.
The TUC said, for that reason it is counting on government to support the idea through the provision of inputs and the strengthening of personnel of the Labour Department to ensure effective monitoring of health and safety at workplaces.
These were contained in a Press Release signed by Mike Atiadevey, Assistant Publications Officer of the Public Affairs Department of the TUC, in connection with World Health Day, which falls on 28 April, this year under the theme: Improving Public Health through stronger health and safety".
Securing health and safety had been an uneasy task for the trades unions and that had been worsened by the advent of HIV/AIDS, a global crisis, which constitute one of the most formidable challenges to development and social progress, it said.
The release said realising the need for health and safety, efforts would be made to tackle HIV/AIDS through workplace actions, whereas Workplace Monitoring and Inspection System would be instituted. The release said the pandemic "is deeply affecting the social and economic fabric of societies and the most productive segment of the labour force and reducing earnings".
It said trades unions see the disease as a workplace issue, not only because it affects people in the prime years of their working life, but because the venue is also suitable for programmes of AIDS prevention and care.
Latest estimates report 23 million working people suffering from the disease with 17.5 million in 43 African countries alone, it added. The condition, it said, have engendered trade unions intense efforts to organise, educate and advance the interest of workers.
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Tema (Greater Accra) 15 May 2002 - Seventy-nine out of the 135 suspected criminals arrested in last Friday's joint police and military swoop at the Tema Main and Fishing harbours have been granted police inquiry bail.
They were released to the Chief Fishermen of Tema following their identification as fishermen, some of whom had returned from sea in the night, while others were preparing to sail during the period they were rounded up. The Tema Regional Commander of Police, Assistant Commissioner Police (ACP), Agnes Sikanartey told newsmen in an interview on Tuesday that they would be released if their claims are found to be true.
Six are held for possessing Indian hemp, while another two are in police grips for possessing dangerous implements. ACP Sikanartey disclosed that the Chief Fisherman for Prampram has also made a representation to her office that some of the 45 people remaining are fishermen from the area, while another employer has identified three of them as his employees.
"We are, therefore, expecting the Chief Fishermen to come help to screen them so that we will hand over the fishermen to them and the remaining will be put before court on various counts of idling.
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Bolgatanga (Upper East) 15 May 2002 - The Nabdam Students Union (NABSU) in Upper East Region on Tuesday expressed concern at the recent dispute over land between two chieftaincy gates of Zaare near Bolgatanga.
They said it was rather regrettable that in the wake of recent conflicts in other parts of the North, and the efforts being made by numerous organisations and individuals to bring peace, there should still be such violence.
The NABSU, in a statement signed by the President and the Secretary said, "in the history of the Frafra kingdom, no traits of such has been traced, thus the peaceful nature of the Bolgatanga District, attracting people fleeing conflict areas. This long and hard won reputation should therefore, not be sacrificed for mere family misunderstanding that could have been resolved amicably without any quarrel."
The students appealed to the Regional Minister, Mr. Mahami Salifu, the Paramount Chiefs of the area and the Regional House of Chiefs to use pragmatic and long lasting measures to curb what they described as, "all-destructive and retrogressive tendency." They also appealed to the Northern Caucus in Parliament to take up the challenge and use their good offices to nib any more ensuing conflict in the bud.
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Tamale (Greater Accra) 15 May 2002 - Five persons, including a Burkinabe, have been arrested at separate locations in a joint military/police operation in the Dagbon area where a state of emergency has been declared since the killing of the Ya-Na, Yakubu Andani, last March.
Those arrested are Bezie Libie (Burkinabe), David Ibrahim, Songye Nditi, Abdulai Abugri and Nasem Nabare. A press statement issued by the Military Task Force in Tamale and signed by its Public Relations Officer, Captain F.K. Ampobi said Bezie and Abdulai were arrested on Sunday at a Military/Police checkpoint in Tamale.
Bezie was in possession of a Russian-made single barrel shot gun whilst Abdulai had a locally made shotgun. David Ibrahim was arrested on a KTS Tamale-Accra bus with a loaded locally manufactured pistol. The statement said the security agencies suspected David to be an armed robber who would have held the passengers to ransom had he not been arrested.
Nasem Nabari was also arrested on a Kumasi-Bawku bound bus with four locally-manufactured single barrel shot guns whilst Songyi Nditi was arrested at a village near Nakpali in the Yendi District for possessing an AK 47 rifle and six rounds of ammunition. During interrogation Bezie Libie said he was a farmer at Nungua, a village on the Ghana Cote d'Ivoire border where he was being harassed by the Ivorians.
He said he was harassed because of former Ivorian Prime Minister, Allassane uattara's political ambition, in which all Burkinabes were asked to leave Cote d'Ivoire. Bezie said he was sending the gun to his country to hunt when he was arrested at the checkpoint.
The statement warned those arming themselves to desist from the act before they are arrested. Earlier, the security forces conducted a dawn cordon and search operation in selected houses at Kukuo, a suburb of Tamale, but no arrests were made.
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Kumbungu (Northern Region) 15 May 2002 - More than 500 people in the Tolon/Kumbungu District of the Northern Region have been rendered homeless following a severe rainstorm that hit the area last Saturday. The storm, which ripped off the roofs of 97 houses and caused considerable damage to foodstuff and personal belongings, however, recorded no casualties.
At Kumbungu, the Nibrasiat English and Arabic JSS block and its kitchen collapsed in the storm while the building of the Kumbungu Local Authority Primary School had two of its three classroom roofs blown off. Houses and barns, most of them roofed with thatch, were also destroyed in the storm.
A skills training centre and a fertilizer depot at Kumbungu and the Bontanga Clinic at Wuba village had their roofs destroyed. Two compound houses at Wantugu were burnt before the rain as the strong wind blew thatch into a local coal-pot fire.
Thirty-five people were consequently displaced. Personal belongings including cash, clothes, bowls, fouls, doves, as well as large quantities of maize and millet stored in barns, were burnt.
At Lungbungu village, a 138 million-cedi European Union Micro Three classroom school block, which was yet to be commissioned, was also destroyed in the rainstorm. Mr. Alhassan Baako, the Tolon-Kumbungu District Chief Executive, who conducted newsmen round the communities, said all affected schools would be provided with temporary structures to enable them to re-open.
He said the district assembly would liaise with the Ghana Education Service to provide permanent structures for the affected schools. Mr Baako announced that the United Kingdom Department for Internation Development (DFID) would construct 20 new school blocks in the district this year and assured the affected schools that they would benefit from the project.
He appealed to NGOs and the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) to come to the aid of the people to supplement the district assembly's efforts. The DCE also appealed to the Volta River Authority to visit Kumbungu to repair the broken-down high tension electricity poles.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 15 May 2002 - Mr Kwadwo Affram Asiedu, Deputy Minister of the Interior, on Tuesday proposed that all OAU member states should exchange information on arrested drug suspects for them to be re-arrested, extradited and prosecuted should they abscond to another country.
Mr Asiedu was addressing the Ministerial meeting of the first OAU Ministerial conference held in Cote D'Ivoire, which deliberated on: "Control of illicit trafficking and abuse of drugs in Africa: The leadership and partnership challenge".
A statement in Accra said the conference was convened to implement the decisions of the 37th Ordinary Assembly of the OAU Heads of State and government held in Lusaka, Zambia last year, which focused on formulating feasible strategies for addressing challenges of illicit drug abuse and trafficking.
Ghana was represented at the conference by a three-man delegation led by the Deputy Minister. Mr Asiedu lauded the conference's earlier message to the Special Session of the UN General Assembly on Children, which called for priority measures to protect all children from the influences of drugs and other narcotics and psychotropic substances.
He expressed the hope that children could be made to play effective roles as ambassadors in the fight against drugs in their respective countries. The Minister appealed to the OAU to use its regional agencies like the PANA and other regulatory bodies that control television to thoroughly censor films and news items that introduced children to drugs and unhealthy sexual behaviours.
He said much as African countries were desirous of fighting the war against drug trafficking and curbing its abuse, they were often crippled by lack of funds and asked the OAU in partnership with other international agencies to make funds available to undertake such ventures.
Mr Asiedu requested the United Nations Drug Control Programme (UNDCP) and other international drug agencies to address the issue of alternative development of other cash crops to stop the cultivation of psychotropic drugs such as cannabis.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 15 May 2002 - President Alpha Oumar Konare of Mali will pay a visit to Ghana from 20 to 22 May.
An official statement in Accra on Monday said as part of his schedule, President Konare would attend the opening ceremony of the Sahel and West Africa Club meeting in Accra and hold bilateral talks with President John Agyekum Kufuor who would confer on his guest the "Order of the Volta", the highest national honour.
President Konare will also visit Kumasi where a mini durbar will be held in his honour.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 15 May 2002 - Mr Alban Bagbin, the Minority Leader in Parliament, on Tuesday said President John Agyekum Kufuor should have fired the top officials of the National Security apparatus instead of waiting for them to resign or to be urged to resign over the killing of Ya-Na Yakubu Andani II, the Over Lord of Dagbon, and 30 others on 26 March.
If President Kufuor had done so he would have stamped his authority over the negligence of public office holders in their duties, he said in an interview with the Ghana News Agency in his office at Parliament House. Mr Bagbin said the assassination of a whole king was of such gravity that the security network of the country could not escape blame.
Mr Bagbin said: "My contact with a whole lot of people in the area and several reports indicated that the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) and the Police in Tamale could not claim to be unaware of the plot.
"Even the then Minister of the Interior, Alhaji Alhassan Yakubu and who is even the MP for Yendi kept on denying media and other reports and said that there was peace in the area while the fighting was going on."
He said the decision of Major Abubakar Sulemana (rtd) of the National Security, that he would not resign, as was reported in an Accra Daily on Tuesday, was an obstinate action and that those who hold public office did so in trust of the people.
"If after the three-man Commission's investigations and those who would either be fired or interdicted were absolved from any wrongdoings, negligence or complacency they could be reinstated and even promoted or given another office.
"As it is now, it is necessary for those being called upon to step aside for the Justice Wuaku's Commission to do its work without interference from any quarters whatsoever, so that at the end no lingering doubts would be left behind about the transparency of the investigations" He said it was the Minority, who called for the establishment of the Judicial Commission to investigate the case and for peace to be restored in the Dagbon area.
Alhaji Yakubu, who comes from the Abudu Gate and has since 1996, been the Member of Parliament for Yendi resigned over the issue. The National Security Adviser, Lieutenant-General Joshua Hamidu (rtd) also resigned on Monday.
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Sekondi (Western Region) 15 May 2002 - Forty-seven people have collected nomination forms from the Electoral Commission to contest the district level elections in the Sekondi Sub-Metropolitan area. Mr John Kwaw, Electoral Officer for Sekondi Sub-Metropolitan area, said the candidates would contest the elections in 17 electoral areas in the sub-metropolitan area.
Over 1,000 people have also collected nomination forms to stand for the unit committee elections in 63 units in the sub-metropolis. Each unit committee is to be made up of 10 elected members and five government appointees. Mr Kwaw said the candidates for unit committees would, therefore, be declared unopposed where only 10 people file nomination.
He said the filing of nominations for the district level and unit committee elections would be done at designated electoral area centres instead of district offices of the EC. This is to make it easy for the candidates to present their nominations, Mr Kwaw said.
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