Seth J. Bokpe's Ghana Newsreel

GOLDFIELDS Ghana Limited today presented a cheque for US $5 million to the Government as its dividend for the 2009 financial year. The amount represents the Government’s 10 per cent share in the company. Mr Peter Turner, Executive, Vice President of Goldfields Ghana who presented the cheque for the amount to the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources Mr Collins Dauda, said the company was committed to  its responsibilities. He said the company believed in long-term investments that could make positive impacts on the local communities. “We will work to sustain the communities in which we operate.” He added. Speaking to the Daily Graphic after the ceremony, Mr Turner  said even though the increase in utility tariffs were affecting the cost of operations of the mine, the company together with players in the industry would  come to a consensus with the government on the tariffs in addition  to cost-cutting measures to ensure that the company remained in busine...

The Director of Studies of the Global Evangelical Church, Rev Prof Elorm Dovlo, has called on Christian leaders to unite and weed out dubious characters parading themselves as men of God and leading people astray. He said even though the Bible warned of grave punishment for such persons who had no calling, Christian leaders had a role to play in ensuring that the Christian fraternity was spared such characters. Rev Prof Dovlo spoke to the Daily Graphic after the 2010 commissioning and ordination of pastors of the Global Evangelical Church in Accra. In all, 12 pastors were ordained, while 5 were commissioned for the work of the vineyard. According to the church’s doctrine, a pastor qualifies for ordination after graduating from the Global Theological Seminary (GTS) and serving and pasturing a congregation for two years, while candidates for commissioning are fresh graduates of the GTS. Rev Prof Dovlo also urged Christian leaders to lead the crusade against corruption and indis...

THE management of Coca-Cola in Ghana is collaborating with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to raise US$1.5 million to help improve water supply and sanitation in the country for the next three years. The company is also making similar investments to the tune of US$30 million to improve access to potable water and sanitation for more than 300 million Africans. The Franchise Manager, Coca-Cola Equatorial Africa,  Mr Philippe Ayivor,  made this known at a media soiree organised in collaboration with the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) in Accra last Friday. The soiree was the company’s way of building partnerships with the media because of their contribution to the development of democratic institutions in the country. He commended the media for creating a “politically astute citizenry in the country”. Mr Ayivor said the company would sponsor the “Health Reporter of the Year” award in this year’s edition of the GJA Awards to encourage health repor...

THE National President of the Association of Building and Civil Engineering Contractors, Mr Edward Kwao Amanor, has called on the government to engage the association in the development of  policies and programmes that affect the construction sector to ensure that the implementation of such polices do not run into difficulties. He said "we are stakeholders in the sector and, therefore, it is necessary that we are engaged to voice  out anything that affect us. When we are informed, it makes things easy when confronted with difficulties." Mr Amanor was speaking at a seminar organised by the  Adabraka office of the Value Added Tax (VAT) Service as part of its monthly engagement of its stakeholders on the need for all businesses to comply with the VAT Law and also encouraged qualified businesses to register and ultimately reduce the number of defaulters. The programme is also aimed at clarifying, to the participants, aspects of the VAT Act amendment in 2002 that concern...

SOME residents of Accra New Town have called on the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to, as a matter of urgency, revive efforts to construct a big drain that would  run through the community.       The residents contended that failure to construct the drain would amount to inviting malaria and cholera epidemics in addition to the destruction of properties should there be  heavy flooding. The drain in question has been taken over by garbage, comprising plastic bags, empty water sachets, leftover food and human waste. The stench from the drain fills the air, making breathing difficult. Domestic animals were also seen feasting in the drain.        A fish-smoking oven and a 'pito' joint sited close to the edge of the drain seem to be struggling for position with the mountain of rubbish dumped around.       An opinion leader, Mr Gibriela Agadi, told the Daily Graphic that even though clearin...

A Family life educator and counsellor, Mrs Flora Sackey, has called on parents to foster friendship between them and their children to ensure that the children do not fall victim to bad influence outside the home. She said when children had the friendship of their parents, they did not get distracted by outside influence that could jeopardise their future. Mrs  Sackey made the call at the second graduation ceremony of the Pre-school Department of the GETSA Model School at Lashibi, near Tema. The school started two years ago with a pupil population of 35 but now boasts 200 pupils, 32 teaching staff and six non-teaching staff. Mrs Sackey observed that the formative years of children needed a lot of attention because it was at that period  that  they formed  most of their character traits. She, therefore, advised parents to  invest their time and prayer in the lives of their children, saying, “You can give the children material things but those will not last, ...

AN argument over who was responsible for the disposal of human excreta under a kiosk, used as a place of abode, turned tragic when a 25-year old driver allegedly stabbed his colleague to death at Pig Farm, a suburb in Accra.       The suspect, Nelson Kpeli, and his colleague drivers lived in one kiosk while the deceased, Richard Hukporti, 26 and his family lived in adjacent kiosks.       Giving an account of the tragedy, a source who spoke to the Daily Graphic on condition of anonymity said the  suspect returned from work and found a panty containing human excreta under his kiosk,  which emitted a foul odour inside the kiosk.      Suspecting it to have come from the deceased’s daughter, he confronted the deceased’s wife and heaped insults on her. The deceased’s wife denied the allegation and invited some neighbours to have a look at the pant and its content. The source said the neighbours confirmed t...

NINE people, including a 10-month-old baby, who had been critically injured in an accident at Weija in Accra yesterday went through another ordeal when they got to the Accident Centre at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital because the lights were off. In the midst of the blackout, nurses struggled to save the lives of the victims who had been conveyed there after their Nissan minibus, with registration number GE 9939 W, had crashed into a breakdown tipper truck, with registration number GR 8423 A. A source at the hospital said the problem with electricity had been recurrent and had endangered the lives of patients. But the Director of General Services of the Hospital, Mr Isaac Owusu Adjakwa, denied the claim. According to Mr Adjakwa, the problem was a temporary one that was receiving attention. He said the only times when power supply to the centre had been cut off were for about two hours on Saturday and 30 minutes on Sunday, explaining that they had been due to a problem from the ...

The Osu Children's Home has taken custody of the newly delivered baby boy whose scrotum was slashed by his mother, the body tied in a plastic bag and abandoned at Nima. The  baby, who was referred to the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) from the Mamobi Polyclinic for surgery, was handed over to the home a week ago. Authorities at the hospital said the transfer to the foster home was to help provide a permanent place of abode for the baby. When contacted, the Home Managress of the Osu Children's Home, Mrs Sharon Abbey, confirmed that the baby was now in its fold. "He is in good health and everything is being done to make his stay at the home comfortable," she stated. The Daily Graphic of June 3, 2010 broke the tale of how a mother’s cruelty (or temporary insanity) and the survival instinct of a new-born baby sent the Kotobabi Police and residents of Mamobi in Accra on a massive hunt for a nursing mother who slashed the scrotum of her newly delivered baby and ...

Nestle Ghana Limited has launched a reviewed version of its HIV/AIDS workplace policy programme aimed at protecting any employee with HIV/AIDS from stigmatisation and discrimination at the work place. The document which was first launched in 2003 is also expected to create awareness and promote continuous education on HIV/AIDS among Nestle’s stakeholders. Launching the documment, the Managing Director of the company, Mr Samer Chedid, said the policy was Nestle’s commitment to ensure that its employees and other stakeholders were well educated on the effect of the pandemic on productivity. He urged the employees to be committed to what has been spelt out in the document in oder to achieve its objectives. The Programme Director of the Ghana Business Coalition, Dr Derek Aryee, said  the country had been recording a reduction in the percentage of the number of people infected with the disease. “We cannot be complacent about it spreading to the general population from the high...

TWO years after the Supreme Court outlawed the use of the pan latrines and directed the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to phase it out within its jurisdiction, the facility was still in use, with human carriers of the night soil still in active business.  Daily Graphic observations in Accra New Town, Pig Farm, Maamobi, Kotobabi,  Osu, Alajo, James Town, Mamprobi , Abelenkpe and Nima showed that the use of the facility was still widespread. Statistics made available by the Metropolitan Public Health Department of the AMA, indicated that 5,002 residences, three industrial and 243 hospitality centres, as well as 46 schools in various parts of the city, were still using the pan latrines. Mr Samuel Kpodo, the Principal Environmental Technologist of the AMA, attributed the delay in enforcing the law to stock-taking and promised that action would be taken by the end of this year when the prosecution of defiant landlords would be effected. In July, 2008, the Supreme Court, in ...

Zain Ghana last Friday put smiles on the face of an Accountant with the Ministry of Justice, Mrs Emelia Derkyi, when she took home  GH¢ 37,500 in the first of the additional three weeks extension of the “Zain Live Your Dream Too” promotion. Mrs Derkyi, a mother of three,  who had been a customer of the telecommunication company for six months, told the Daily Graphic that she was initially sceptical about the promotion, but was now convinced that it was real. After hitting gold in her three boxes of fortune, a breathless Emelia said ‘’thank God for this wonderful opportunity, Zain has changed my life. I have been using Zain because of its affordable international rates, as well as Internet services but never believed that ‘Live Your Dream’ was a reality”. The visibly excited winner called on everyone to use Zain because “apart from being a reliable network, it is making an impact on people’s lives in a wonderful way”. “From now onwards, I a m going to be a Zain customer...

FORMER President Jerry John Rawlings has described as unfortunate the death recorded in  last Sunday’s heavy downpour and has, therefore, called on the government to take precautionary measures to ensure that it does not happen again. The torrential rain killed 11 eleven people in Ashaiman and its environs with four other deaths confirmed by the National Disaster Management Organisation (NADMO) at Nmai Dzorn in the Adentan Municipality. The former President, who was accompanied by his wife, Nana Konadu Agyeman Rawlings, said this when he paid a courtesy call on the National Chief Imam, Sheikh Osmanu Nuhu Sharubutu, to mourn the death of the Chief Imam’s brother, Alhaji Ibrahim Sharubutu. Alhaji Sharubutu aged  82, who died last  Tuesday and was  buried on the same day because of Islamic custom, was an Islamic Scholar and a member of the National Chief Imam’s Advisory Committee. The Chief Imam was said to be in Copenhagen, Denmark, for a world peace conference ...

Ghana needs to strengthen institutions mandated to oversee a transparent oil and gas sector in order to avoid the ‘resource-curse’ which has plagued most African countries. The Vice-Chairman of the Civil Society Platform on Oil and Gas, Mr Kwame Jantuah, made the remark in a  key note address delivered at the Re-launching of the  Regional Extractive Industries Knowledge Hub (REIKH) and the Summer School on Governance of Oil, Gas and Mining Revenues in Accra today (Monday). The REIKH is a centre of knowledge development established by the Revenue Watch Institute (RWI) and the German Technical Co-operation (GTZ) in collaboration with the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration (GIMPA). It is to build the capacity of oversight bodies in Africa to exert their influence on the prudent governance of the extractive sector and to promote effective management of oil, gas, and mining resources. The hub was established within the context of an extractive industry ...

THE Ministry of Tourism says this year’s Emancipation Day celebration which begins in Accra on Wednesday is another opportunity for the country to take advantage of the recent success of the Black Stars at the 2010 World Cup to market Ghana’s tourism potential to international investors and tourists. Highlighting activities to mark this year’s event, the Deputy Minister of Tourism, Mr Kobby Acheampong, said the ministry had, in collaboration with the Ghana Tourist Board (GTB), put up a comprehensive advertising package on Euro Sports, a channel on DSTV, and a website on the country’s tourism sites, targeting the European market. This year’s celebration, which marks the 12th Emancipation Day in the country, runs from July 21 to August 1, 2010. The Emancipation Day celebration originated from the Caribbean on August 1, 1834 and has been on Ghana’s tourism calendar since 1998 when it became the first African nation to join in the celebration to re-affirm its status as the gateway to...

A Project to establish e-learning centres aimed at training both teachers and pupils in Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the Ada Constituency has been launched at Ada Foah in the Dangbe East District of the Greater Accra Region. Under the first phase of the project, which is an initiative of the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ada, who is also  the Minister of Education, Mr Alex Tetteh-Enyo, two of the centres will be set up at Ada Foah and Big Ada by September 2010 and Kasseh in the second phase. E-toys & more, distributors of children's interactive educational products and a member of the Digital Education Group (DEG),  is  undertaking the project with funding  from Mr Tetteh-Enyo’s share of the MPs Common Fund. The centres, when completed, are expected to house facilities including interactive video learning resources, multimedia junior computers, educational games and puzzles, e-learning software suite for pre-school pupils, an Internet facili...

A Youth leadership training initiative and a summer vacation school aimed at empowering students in first cycle institutions with knowledge in the sciences and leadership skills, has been launched at Mampong Presbyterian Senior High School in the Eastern Region. The project, known as ‘Securing Their Future: Youth Leadership Training Initiative in Ghana’ is a collaboration between the Leadership Africa USA (LAU), a Washington DC- based NGO, focuses on delivering leadership development training to African youth and beyond and the Tetteh Quarshie Educational Fund with support from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Cocoa Foundation. It will feature the training of teachers and the delivery of a daily science and  leadership courses to  participants.  It will also introduce core leadership principles and create a foundation for increasing competence in Mathematics, Chemistry, Physics, Biology and Computer Science. Leadership A...

Ghana’s economy has achieved its lowest inflation figure in three years, having recorded a figure of 9.52 per cent for the month of June 2010. Inflation dropped closer to that figure in December 2007 when the rate closed at 12.75 per cent. The latest release represents a drop of 1.16 per cent from the previous month’s 10.68 per cent and also follows a consistent pattern in which the figure has been dropping over the last 12 months. The Government Statistician, Dr Grace Bediako, who announced this at a news conference in Accra yesterday, fell short of admitting that the figure was a single digit inflation, although the government thinks otherwise. The rate of inflation has been falling for 12 consecutive months and the largest decline in 2010 was recorded when it dropped by 1.66 percentage points, followed by the January drop, which was 1.19 percentage points. The other months recorded declines below one percentage point and the cumulative decline between January and June 2010...

OPERATORS of various dumping sites across the country have been advised to cover dugouts to prevent the formation of ponds that serve as breeding grounds for mosquitoes.  Mr Paul Coonley Boateng, the Chief Executive Officer of Free Africa From Mosquitoes, (FAFM), a non-governmental organisation (NGO) with a focus on mosquito eradication,  gave the advice when he led a team of researchers to conduct a survey at the Pantang-Abokobi dumping site to identify hotbeds for breeding mosquitoes.  Sited not far from the Pantang hospital, the Pantang dump site is one of the many dump sites serving as a holding place for tonnes of garbage generated by residents of Accra and its environs. The site has several ponds and containers filled with mosquito larvae.   The exercise was also to help raise awareness among communities living close to the dumping sites of the need to maintain hygienic environments.  Mr Boateng  noted that:  “Mosquitoes do not need an oc...

Ghana will roll out its number portability system, a technology that allows cell phone users to migrate from one network to another without changing their numbers, by June next year, the Minister of Communication, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, has stated. He said the move would ensure that telecom companies did not compromise on service quality but ensure that subscribers received value for money. “The system will empower the subscriber to decide which mobile network works best and ensure that operators live up to expectation,” he added. Mr Iddrisu was speaking at a workshop organised by the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC), with the support of the Ministry of Education, to engage the public on electronic magnetic field exposure and its health related issues. He said the government would continue to ensure that operators were accountable to consumers so that the latter were not taken for granted. The National Communications Authority (NCA) announced plans to of...

The Osu Children's Home has taken custody of the newly delivered baby boy whose scrotum was slashed by his mother, the body tied in a plastic bag and abandoned at Nima. The  baby, who was referred to the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) from the Mamobi Polyclinic for surgery, was handed over to the home a week ago. Authorities at the hospital said the transfer to the foster home was to help provide a permanent place of abode for the baby. When contacted, the Home Managress of the Osu Children's Home, Mrs Sharon Abbey, confirmed that the baby was now in its fold. "He is in good health and everything is being done to make his stay at the home comfortable," she stated. The Daily Graphic of June 3, 2010 broke the tale of how a mother’s cruelty (or temporary insanity) and the survival instinct of a new-born baby sent the Kotobabi Police and residents of Mamobi in Accra on a massive hunt for a nursing mother who slashed the scrotum of her newly delivered baby and...

MV Dodi Princess, the cruise vessel on the Volta Lake was yesterday (Republic Day) turned into a carnival of fun and excitement when revellers including members of the Greater Accra Region Prison Ladies Association (PRILAS) rocked the vessel to celebrate Republic Day The carnival on board the trip on the 19-year old vessel was created by Kings Anchor Band, the official band for the vessel which dished out songs from Kojo Antwi’s Densu to Nana Borro’s ‘Aha Yede.’ In fact no music genre known to Ghanaians was sparred. Call it a floating jamboree and you would not be far from right. The passengers jumped, twisted and wriggled with dexterity as the band dished out tune after tune, the entertainment-starved officers could not resist the temptation of joining other passengers on board to dance the holiday away. As the band sang on unabated, the entertainment-starved prison officers could not resist the temptation of joining other passengers on board to dance the holiday away. The...

It is a cold and gloomy  morning in July, and the sky is pregnant with dark clouds, with the usual fog gradually clearing over the Volta Lake.  The excited faces of  both young and old revellers crossing the narrow wooden pier to the MV Dodi Princess, the cruise ferry on the Volta lake,  promised good times to come as the  vessel prepares to host Republic Day holiday makers en route to the Dodi Island. The Dodi Princess docked at Akosombo Dodi Island is one of the most remote inhabited places in Ghana with a population of about 250 people. With some estimated 16  square miles in area, it lies in the Volta River, 30 kilometres north of the Akosombo Dam, the nerve centre of Ghana’s electrical energy. As the 19-year-old ferry navigates its way to the Island, the horizon disappears into grey; the  miles of water reflects the grey sky surrounding the ferry  giving an inexplicable  feeling of drifting off into oblivion while one dances t...

 Prostate cancer has been found to be the second leading cause of death among Ghanaian men between the ages of 50 and 74. Prostate cancer is a cancer that develops in the prostate; a gland in the male reproductive system and tends to develop in men over 40 years. It is said to be most prevalent in black men. According to a Urologist at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), Dr Matthew Y. Kyei, one out of every five Ghanaian men risks having the disease in their life time and, therefore, advised that men within the vulnerable age group should go for regular check-ups to ensure the early detection of its symptoms and treatment. Dr Kyei made this known at a seminar organised in Accra by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) to create awareness on the disease among personnel of the security services. The programme, which formed part of the GHS’s monthly health promotion was attended by personnel of the Ghana Prisons Service, the Ghana  Police Service, Customs, Excise and Preventi...