Homecoming Steering Committee of UK and Ireland launched
Don’t personalise offences of the past- Kwesi Pratt
Kufuor leaves for ECOWAS summit
Government asked to check brain drain in health sector
Economic participants communiqué
BECE results in eight subjects cancelled
Minister urged to clarify ban on "Saiko" fishing
Government to train 30,000 unemployed youth by 2003
Principal State Attorney takes over Victor Smith's case
Accra (Greater Accra) 18 May 2002- The United Kingdom and Ireland branch of the Home-Coming Steering Committee has been launched in London, a statement from the Ghana High Commissioned on Thursday said. The committee, which is made up of Ghanaian professionals, was constituted after the Home-Coming Summit held in Accra last year to mobilise non-resident Ghanaians to support the nation's development efforts.
Some of the issues raised during the forum centred on the possibility of imposing a development levy on all non-resident Ghanaians, easy access to land acquisition for business purposes and the need for financial assistance to the Ghana Airways.
In an address read for Mr Isaac Osei, Ghana's High Commissioner in the UK, he said the formation of the committee reflected the manifestation and desire of Ghanaians abroad to contribute to the overall development of the country. He said government was taking steps to put in place, a viable and responsible legal and regulatory framework for the people to work, produce and create wealth for themselves.
He hailed the voluntary spirit shown by the executives and pledged the support of the mission in the realisation of it's aim and objectives. He appealed to Ghanaians resident abroad, to support the committee by investing their profits back home to help improve the living conditions of their compatriots. The Revered Adu Gyamfi, Chairman of the Home-Coming Steering Committee, said it would among other things provide counselling for Ghanaians who wish to return home to invest or resettle.
He, however, called for a thorough re-orientation of the immigration and CEPS official at the country's major points of entry to give impetus to the government's drive to attract investments into the country. Mr K. T. Hammond, Deputy Minister of Energy and Ghana's Deputy High Commissioner to the UK, Mr Kwabena Baah-Duodu attended it.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 18 May 2002- President John Agyekum Kufuor returned home on Saturday from Yamousoukro, Cote d'Ivoire after attending a one-day ECOWAS summit on the way forward for the NEPAD Initiative.
He was accompanied by the Foreign Minister, Mr. Hackman Owusu-Agyeman, Major Courage Quarshigah, Minister of Food and Agriculture and Dr. Paa Kwesi Nduom, Minister of Economic Planning and Regional Integration and Dr. Mohamed Ibn Chambas, Executive Secretary of ECOWAS.
President Kufuor was met on arrival by the Vice-President, Alhaji Aliu Mahama and the Minister of Information and Presidential Affairs, Mr. Jake Obetsebi Lamptey. In an interview with newsmen later, the Foreign Minister said the Leaders reaffirmed their commitments to the NEPAD Initiative and pledged to accelerate the resource mobilisation needed for the initiative.
They also recognised and declared their support for the use of the various regional groupings as the building blocks for the advancement of the NEPAD. Mr. Owusu-Agyeman said the summit agreed to use the ECOWAS as the final regional entity charged with the implementation and advancement of the NEPAD, and in this regard, urged the UEMOA and ECOWAS to harmonise their activities in its implementation.
The Foreign Minister said, it was decided that the media should be invited to the technical meetings of the ECOWAS on the NEPAD so that they could disseminate information to the people of the Sub-Region of the programme and its facilitation. The Mediation and Security Council also met and discussed the political situation in Liberia and passed a resolution calling for the immediate cessation of hostilities and the commencement of a peace process.
The ministerial meeting, which preceded the summit also recommended a facilitator to be chosen to add momentum to the proposed peace talks and bring the LURD and the Liberian government together. The meeting said action should be taken to ensure that women and children, who are the most vulnerable during such wars not to suffer, adding that already there are 22,000 Liberian refugees in Ghana as a result of such hostilities.
The Minister said the chairman of the committee empowered President Wade and the Executive Secretary of ECOWAS to appeal to the international community, especially the UN and G-8 to assist in the process of bringing peace in Liberia because it engulfs its neighbour, Sierra Leone, which has just come out war.
He said President Kufuor took the opportunity to hold discussions with President Olusengu Obasanjo of Nigeria and President Laurent Gbagbo of Cote d'Ivoire on bilateral issues as well as trade. Dr. Chambas knowledged that Liberia used to be a "headache" for the sub-region until peace was restored but lamented that lately, events in that country call for an immediate attention.
He said the ECOWAS would not recognise any unconstitutional government in the sub-region and urged Liberians to go back to the peace table and restore calm before the next election in that country. The Summit was attended by seven heads of state and two Prime Ministers, whilst four countries were represented by their foreign ministers.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 18 May 2002- Mr. Kwesi Pratt Junior, editor of The Insight newspaper and a member of the Socialist Forum of Ghana has, appealed to Ghanaians to exercise the greatest restraint in the handling of extra judicial abuses of post independent governments of Ghana.
He contended that none of those governments could hold its chest out boldly and say it had always been perfect and asked Ghanaians not to personalise offences of the past but explore ways of peace and work to move the country forward economically.
"All of us have done things where we went wrong, but some people are filled with extreme passion and want to fight at the least opportunity. This will not move our society one inch forward. This can only move us back", he told the first in a series of public fora of the Socialist Forum of Ghana (SFG).
The forum diagnosed the Structural Adjustment Programme (SAP) and sought to offer alternatives to the programme, which speakers said has failed to address the economic problems of the country for the 20 years that it has operated. It was organised by SFG and the Insight on Friday in Accra, and was chaired by Professor Ama Ata Aidoo, a renowned writer and a former Secretary of Education in the erstwhile regime of the Provisional National Defence Council (PNDC).
The SFG, which started about three years ago, is a new club of a cross section of local political parties and youth organisations that study and discuss local topical issues and offer suggestions and alternatives to national policies and programmes.
Speakers at the forum, who included Professor Akilagpa Sawyer, former Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Dr Yao Graham coordinator of the Third World Network Africa, a research and advocacy organisation based in Accra, and Professor Ansa Asamoa, a noted socialist and a former lecturer at the University of Cape Coast, whose paper was presented on his behalf by Mr Pratt.
Mr Pratt's caution to aggrieved persons of former governments to exercise utmost restraint came when passions went high and resulted in an open confrontation between Mr Enoch Teye Mensah and Alhaji Huudu Yahaya, two of the six vice-chairmen of the National Democratic Congress NDC, on one hand and Mr James William Owu, who described himself as a nationalist on the other hand.
Mr Owu in a question challenged the constitutionality of coup d'etats and asked Ghanaian intellectuals why they failed to reject military adventurism. In the process Mr. Owu made a remark about former President Rawlings, which many people in the audience considered unsavoury and shouted on him to put hold on his question and sit down, but Mr Owu would not budge.
This threw the forum into more than a 20-minute hold-up which resulted in a near exchange of words between Mr Mensah and Alhaji Yahaya. Mr Pratt said the uproar was an indication of the polarisation of the Ghanaian society and the tendency to confront personalities rather than issues and added that such a situation would never promote any healthy development in the country. All the speakers had earlier noted that the structural anomalies inherited from the colonial era in the Ghanaian economy and stressed the need to chart a new path for the economy.
Professor Sawyer called for a holistic and honest diagnosis of the Ghanaian economic situation and argued it would be naïve to think that foreign aid and direct investment would transform Ghana's economy for the better. ''It would only ease the pain, but cannot transform the economy. Foreign investment is not in the interest of global capital. Foreign investments are only for the shareholders benefits. If they transform the economy at all they are sheer coincidental'', he said.
He asked African governments to commit themselves to domestic programs as parts of the economic healing process and work together at the sub-regional level to push forward their development. Professor Ansa Asamoa said the Ghanaian economy has a large very large peasant sector and is characterised by light industrialisation in the informal sector without a synchronised industrialisation of agriculture. He said there was a backward extractive industrial sector as the economy still produces largely primary goods as exports.
He called for the industrialisation of agriculture, development of light industry, transformation of the extractive industry by processing locally primary products to accelerate the development of the productive forces in the country.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 18 May 2002- President John Agyekum Kufuor left Accra on Friday for Yamoussoukro, Cote D'Ivoire to attend a two-day ECOWAS Summit to discuss the implementation of the New Economic Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) initiative. The President, who was accompanied by the Minister of Economic Planning and Regional Integration, Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom, was seen off at the Airport by the Vice-President, Alhaji Aliu Mahama, Ministers of State and the Dean of the Diplomatic Corp, Ibrahim Omar.
Briefing newsmen, Dr Nduom said the meeting would mainly discuss the implementation of the NEPAD within the Sub-region and also convince leaders to make a commitment to promote the NEPAD initiative before the G8 Summit scheduled for Canada by the end of June.
The Summit, which is being convened by President Laurent Gbagbo, would also discuss a common customs union, monetary union, free-border and other projects being undertaken by the ECOWAS and how they could be accelerated. Already in Yamoussoukro for the Summit, are Foreign Minister, Mr Hackman Owusu Agyeman and the Minister of Food and Agriculture, Major Courage Quashigah.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 18 May 2002- A health official has called on the government to check the brain drain in the health sector by immediately solving problems of personnel there, notwithstanding the country's poor economy.
Professor Gilford Ashitey, of the Department of Community Health of the University of Ghana Medical School (UGMS), on Friday noted that the exodus of Ghanaian doctors to other countries was a sensitive issue for which no solution "appears in sight." He said: "This is the real problem. It will take sometime for the economy to improve, so what should we do in the interim?"
Prof. Ashitey was speaking on the topic "Is the UGMS a Five Star Medical School" at a public lecture, organised by the UGMS as part of activities to mark its month-long 40th Anniversary and Golden Jubilee celebrations in Accra. Activities for the celebration started from 28 April and would end in 28 May.
Prof. Ashitey noted that though the UGMS and the University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, had produced 1658 and 800 doctors respectively, only 1669 of them were practising in the country, adding that Ghana was nowhere near attaining equitable distribution the professionals. He said: "It is worth emphasising that the problem has not been with the output of our medical schools, rather how to retain the graduates in the country."
Prof. Ashitey said: "The Ministry of Health, the largest employer of doctors have over the years introduced and revised special incentive packages-provision of cars, salary increases and additional duty allowance with no success. In fact the goal posts keep moving", he said.
He noted that the Ghana Medical Association (GMA) had consistently requested government to provide incentives and better conditions of service so that doctors could work comfortably in the country. He appealed to the alumni to help in the resuscitation and expansion of the Medical School to enable it continue producing quality doctors and specialists.
Prof. Ashitey observed that after 40 years, the UGMS was still grappling with the problems of financial, human and material deprivations. He said: "No doubt the most pressing problem facing the UGMS and health services in general, is an infusion of resources." Prof. Ashitey advised medical personnel to work hard to ensure that the investment in the health sector was paying real dividends to the country.
Prof. Daniel Adzei Bekoe, Member of the Council of State and a former vice-chancellor of the University of Ghana, called on developed countries to compensate for the brain drain from developing countries. He said: " the developed countries who benefited from us should give "something" in return for the resources used in training this professionals."
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(From Charles Koomson, Ghana news agency special correspondent, Lagos, Nigeria)
Lagos (Nigeria) 18 May 2002- Participants at a regional workshop on economic and financial journalism in Lagos, Nigeria, have called for increased collaboration among media agencies in the sub-region to enhance information flow.
In a communiqué issued today, at the end of a five-day workshop, organized by the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM), the participants urged governments to support such efforts to facilitate the integration process of the sub-region.
"Governments in the sub-region must assist journalists in the discharge of their duties by providing them with predictable and structured access to economic and financial information", they urged. The 26 participants at the workshop included media practitioners at middle, senior and executive levels involved in editing, reporting and producing macroeconomic and financial news from the public and private sectors in the Gambia, Nigeria, Ghana and Sierra Leone.
The main topics covered during the workshop were the use and interpretation of basic statistics, review of macroeconomics, sources and interpretation of macroeconomic indicators, role of financial markets and financial and economic reporting.
Participants were also taken through learning the law for economic and financial journalism, international monetary and financial systems, and developments under the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) second monetary zone. The media practitioners emphasised that since they needed protection in the performance of their duties, the appropriate agencies of ECOWAS must work to enact a freedom of information law to enhance the efforts of the mass media.
Realising that the majority of the people in the sub-region did not have access to credit from the banks, the participants called on governments to recognize credit unions and set up regulatory bodies to supervise their operations so that such people could benefit.
To enhance the institutional efficiency of such financial regulatory bodies, the media practitioners emphasized that appointments to such bodies should be based on merit and not on political, ethnic or religious considerations, and that such appointments should be channelled through parliament.
Closing the workshop, Mr Chris Itsede, director general of WAIFEM, noted that the current democratic dispensation in the sub-region demanded that journalists need to put in greater efforts to assist governments to meet the aspirations of the people. He urged journalists to continue to educate the people on the content and consequences of government policies and programmes.
This will allow the electorate to make informed decisions and also to distill the manifestoes of aspiring politicians, he added. Mr Itsede urged the participants to increase their output on the quality of their economic and financial reports through designing better programmes. The training workshop was the 69th to be organized by WAIFEM since 16 April 1997.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 18 May 2002- Results of eight out of ten subjects in this year's Basic Education Certificate Examinations (BECE) have been cancelled. Candidates are to re-sit the affected papers in early July at the expense of West Africa Examination Council (WAEC) and the designated printing firm.
Professor Christopher Ameyaw Ekumfi, Minister of Education told a press conference on Friday that the ministry had to take "this harsh decision in the face of overwhelming evidence of leakage of examination questions." He said Mathematics, English Language, General Science and Social Science, which are the core subjects, would have both the essay and objectives sections re-sat.
However, only the objective paper of Pre-technical and Vocational Skills, Agriculture Science, Religious and Moral Studies would be re-written. He said the results of the French and Ghanaian language papers are however, to remain as they are. Prof. Ameyaw Ekumfi said there was enough evidence that the papers leaked in the Greater Accra, Western, Ashanti, Volta, Central and Eastern Regions.
"The decision to order a general re-sit stems from the fact that the other regions could access some of these papers. We can not rule that out." Prof. Ameyaw Ekumfi said marks gathered from the normal continuous assessment in school would not be affected.
Among other measures taken by the ministry include the review of contract between WAEC and the designated printing company. "Security personnel with WAEC are to be interdicted immediately, while certain key officials of WAEC would have their appointments reviewed."
He said the committee that investigated the issue would submit its recommendations on Tuesday. The nation first learnt of the leakage in the media on 24 April 2002 but this was denied by WAEC. Two hundred and sixty five thousand, nine hundred and fifty six students sat the 2002 BECE from 22 to 26 April. Six thousand, Seven hundred and ninety-five basic school registered for participation while 958 centres took care of the candidates.
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Saltpond (Central Region) 18 May 2002- The Central Region Association of Presiding Members has called on the Minister of State for Fisheries to clear the air on the ban on "Saiko" fishing. "Saiko" fishing is the practice of buying fish from foreign trawlers on the high seas and re-selling.
The presiding members said the ban, imposed about two months ago at Elmina by the Chief Fishermen's Association, was creating confusion in the fishing communities. The ban was imposed because "Saiko" fishing is regarded as trans-shipment, which is illegal.
In a four-point resolution passed at their monthly meeting at Saltpond, the Presiding Members said whilst some fishermen were observing the ban others flouted it with impunity. The association suggested to the payment of one million cedis each to assembly members who have served their full four-year term as ex-gratia award.
It said the payment would be a morale booster for the incoming assembly members. The resolution called on the government to make the position of Presiding Member a full-time job to enable the holder devote more time to the work of the assembly. In view of the upsurge in armed robberies the association called on the communities to form neighbourhood watch committees to help the security agencies to fight criminals in the region. Addressing the meeting, the District Chief Executive for Mfantseman, Mr. Kofi Wilson, urged presiding members to initiate policies that would enhance the smooth functioning of the assemblies.
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Tibani (Upper West) 18 May 2002 - The government is to train about 30,000 registered unemployed youth to gain employable skills by the end of 2003, Mr. S.V. Apraku-Mensah, Director of the Integrated Community Centres for Employable Skills (ICCES) has said. He said ICCES would therefore be established in all 110 districts to absorb registered unemployed youth.
Mr. Apraku-Mensah announced this at Tibani in the Nadowli District of the Upper West Region on Thursday when he commissioned the local ICCES. He said both crash and regular courses would be organised to train the youth to be self-reliant to reduce the high rate of unemployment.
He identified soap, pomade, shito and tye and dye making as some of the short courses, while masonry, carpentry, tailoring and catering services would form the regular courses. Mr. Apraku-Mensah said instructors who were teaching in those centres on voluntary basis would now be put on salary with effect from January this year.
He urged the instructors to redouble their effort to achieve the aims of the centres. Mrs. Pauline Ningkpeng, Nadowli District Chief Executive pledged the district assembly's support for the centre in training the youth to acquire skills. She called on the youth, particularly the girls to take advantage of the programme to secure their future.
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Accra (Greater Accra) 18 May 2002- Mr Anthony Gyambiby, Principal State Attorney on Friday took over the prosecution of a case in which Victor Emmanuel Smith, an aide to former President Jerry John Rawlings, has been charged for allegedly threatening two journalists.
The journalists are Mr Kweku Baako Junior, Editor of the Crusading Guide and Mrs Margaret Amoakohene, a social commentator and lecturer at the School of Communication Studies, University of Ghana, Legon. Superintendent of Police, Mr Patrick Sarpong, was previously prosecuting the case, which was due for hearing today.
At today's sitting, Mr Gyambiby told the tribunal that "I have been instructed by the Director for Public Prosecution to take over prosecution of the case and I would therefore ask for two weeks adjournment to start with the trial."
Dr Josiah Aryeh, leading counsel for the accused asked for a one week or three weeks adjournment to commence with the trial" due to his schedule. Both prosecution and defence counsel finally agreed on three weeks adjournment, hence the tribunal chaired by Mr Imoru Ziblim adjourned till 7 June, for hearing.
Smith has pleaded not guilty to issuing a threat of death and is on a 50 million cedis bail. The tribunal was told that on 18 March, the accused and Mr Abrampah
Mensah, interim president of the Action Forum, which is affiliated to the National Democratic Congress (NDC), wrote a correspondence to be handed over to Mr
Baako Junior and Mrs Amoakohene that they would not sit down unconcerned over their criticisms of the former President.
According to prosecution the accused also warned that if the two failed to stop their criticisms after receiving the letters, members of the Action Forum would be given pickup vehicles to track and crash them. The accused also said should these steps to silence the two fail, they would devise other means to kill them.
Mr Mensah, who is a witness in the case, was alarmed and revealed the plot to a friend and handed the letter to him. This friend in turn gave it to Mr Baako Junior who informed Mrs Amoakohene. Accused admitted being the author of the threatening letter on his arrest.
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