Seth J. Bokpe's Ghana Newsreel

 The CPP Chairman,  Mr Ladi Nylander The Convention Peoples Party (CPP) has called for a balance between the country’s quest for economic growth and national development for the rational exploitation of the country’s natural resources. “As we continue to exploit our natural resources to meet socio-economic needs, we invariably leave trails of a footprint of destruction. The importance our party attaches to the issues of the environment is underscored by the fact that the country’s ability to develop and reduce poverty is directly linked with the state of health of our environment.” The CPP Shadow member for the Environment, Science, Technology and Communication, Mr Eric K. Benyako, made the remark at a press conference  to provide highlights of the party’s vision and strategies for managing the environment. Mr Benyako, flanked by some members of the Shadow cabinet including the party Chairman, Mr Nadi Nylander, Mr Bright Akwetey for Atorney General and Justice, Dr Hen

  The President of the Rotary Club Achimota , Nana Odeneho Kyeremanten inspecting the project  while other Rotarians look on. THE Rotary Club of Achimota-Accra is constructing a three-classroom block for the inhabitants of Fiakonya near Dodowa in the Dangme West District of the Greater-Accra Region. The project, which is estimated to cost GH¢100, 000, will also involve the construction of other facilities such as  a library, a staff common room and a storeroom. Expected to be completed by the end of this year, the building will serve more than 14 satellite communities in the area. Funding for the project was raised through contributions from members of the club and corporate institutions. The President of the Rotary Club Achimota , Nana Odeneho Kyeremanten, told  to the Daily Graphic at the project site that the club was touched by the plight of the people in the area, especially concerning access to adequate classrooms, to undertake the project. “They appealed to us and

  Mrs Dora Agigbire, the Headmistress of the Nkwantanan D/A Primary and JHS receiving a certificate of recognition from Mr Ben Shamo, Head of Money Transfer at the Trust Bank. WESTERN Union (WU), a global leader in money transfer, and it agents in Ghana have presented 600 dual-sitting desks to six selected schools in the Greater Accra, Central, Ashanti and Western regions to help provide a conducive environment for learning. The initiative which was aligned with ’Our World, Our Family’ signature programme of the Western Union Foundation, was aimed at empowering individuals, families and communities to have access to better education and economic opportunities. It had Nkwantanan D/A 5 and 6 Primary and Junior High School (JHS) and the Zakari Kope Primary and JHS in the Greater Accra Region; Nyanfeku Ekroful Catholic JHS in the Central Region; Whindo M/A Primary School in the Western Region and; the Daatano Primary and Penyi Number 1 JHS in the Ashanti Region, each receiving 1

The Member of Parliament (MP) for the Ablekuma North, Mr Justice Joe Appiah, has called on the youth to eschew social vices and be law-abiding. This, he said, would prevent them from falling prey to acts that could alienate them from their future progress. Mr Appiah gave the advise at the thanksgiving service of this year’s Children’s Camp of the Accra Presbytery of the Global Evangelical Church (GEC) in Accra. It was on the theme: Faithful stewardship, key to divine blessing”. Over 600 children drawn from 28 congregations of the 63 congregations that made up the presbytery attended the one-week camp. Mr Appiah noted that, “Indiscipline, promiscuity, pre-marital sex could lead you to teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases and ‘sakawa’ which continue to devastate the lives of many in this country”. The MP congratulated the organisers of the camp and urged the youth to be obedient to their teachers, church leaders and role models and take active part in all communal eff

THE University Teachers Association of Ghana (UTAG) has reaffirmed its resolve to withdraw its services until the actual value of entry-level salaries of its members are restored. “What is at stake is the government’s failure to honour its own promise to restore the entry-level salary of the lecturer as originally agreed with government and pay our genuine arrears spanning from the beginning of 2009 to present,” it said. Addressing a press conference after its meeting in Accra with Vice-chancellors, Ghana, the umbrella body of vice-chancellors of public universities in the country, the National President of UTAG, Dr Samuel Asiedu-Addo, said in spite of the payment schedule the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning (MoFEP) signed and forwarded to UTAG, the ministry failed to pay any of the arrears, adding that the minister had not found it necessary to respond to UTAG’s communication. He said the ministry’s response to UTAG’s withdrawal of service in a letter dated October 6,

THE Pro-Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana, Prof Kwesi Yankah, has made a passionate appeal to the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development to facilitate the establishment of community libraries throughout the country to rekindle the habit of reading among children. “Concern for our poor reading habit has been expressed, but beyond this I am yet to come across a district or municipal assembly whose infrastructure plan for the year includes the building of a library for respective towns or villages,” he stated. Prof Yankah was speaking at the fourth Toyota/Children’s Literature Foundation (CLiF) Awards in Accra at the weekend. This year’s awards had Mr Ralph Sutherland winning the Illustrator Award for his work on, “Voice in the Forest”, authored by Efua T. Sutherland. The award-winning title went to Afram Publications, while Sub-Saharan Publishers went home with a special award for its role in promoting children’s books in the country. The CLif is a voluntary,

  Judith Rosemond Sackitey-Ninye, the best student of the school receiving her prize from the DCE for Manya Krobo, Isaac Agbo-Tetteh TWENTY-TWO students and the teachers of the Odumase Presbyterian Junior High School last Friday received surprise packages from Zain Ghana in recognition of their sterling performance in the 2009 Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE). Each of the 22 graduating students received a certificate and Zain branded stationery, while the best male and female students — Elvis Sawer and Judith Rosemond Sackitey-Ninye — each received a “chop-box” filled with provisions. Zain Ghana rebuilt the school a year ago in response to a Daily Graphic publication of May 17, 2010 and it is now equipped with facilities such as a computer laboratory with Internet access, offices and  a library. The school, which was built in 1883, was in a deplorable state when the company pledged its support in May 2009, after learning about the tragic death of a pupil, Bernar

  MD of the Prairie Volta Limited, Everette Anderson, explaining a point  about rice cultivation  to students of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Ghana when they visited the Aveyime Rice Farm . Everette Anderson explaining a point about a tractor's operation to the students while Mr Vandyke-Mensah(in cap  with arms folded) looks on. Everette Anderson, explaining the farm's irrigation system with Mr Vandyke-Mensah (in cap with hands on the waist) looking on.  A Managing Partner of the Prairie Volta Limited, a local rice production company at Aveyime in the Volta Region, has appealed to commercial banks in Ghana to lend support to commercial farming in the country in order to push Ghana’s quest for a sustained food security. Mr John VanDyke-Mensah said with the exception of the Agriculture Development Bank which is living to its mandate of supporting agriculture development in the country, most of the commercial banks are not in tune with supp

The Asafoatse of the Osu Mankralo Stool, Nii Akapeh, has called on Parliament to amend aspects of the Dual Citizenship Law that prevents Ghanaians living abroad from returning home to contribute their quota to national development.                                   The Speaker of Parliament, Rt Hon Joyce Bamford-Addo Nii Akapeh, who just returned from the United States on a trip there to celebrate the Homowo festival at the invitation of the Ga-Dangme Foundation, told the Daily Graphic that “a number of Ghanaians with US citizenship wanted to come back home but because they had American citizenship, they did not think the current law favoured them. The Dual Citizenship Act came into effect in 2003 and sought among other things to provide for dual citizenship and grants the "right of abode" to Diasporan Africans. Under the law, a Ghanaian may decide to acquire the citizenship of another nation in addition to his citizenship, and thereby become a dual citizen, if the

A Turkish national, Atila Inac, alias Mohammed, is  in the grips of the police for allegedly using a US visa foil number issued to an unnamed former Ghanaian Deputy Minister  of Finance to  defraud a victim to the tune of GH¢10,000. The suspect charged the victim, David Nii Abeka Buxton GH¢14,000 and arranged for an initial payment of GH¢10, 000 with the balance to be paid upon the delivery of the visa. When the visa delayed in coming, the victim reported the matter to the police and when the suspect returned the passport to the victim with an American Visa in it on October 4, 2010, he (suspect) was arrested. A check by the police at the US Embassy revealed that the visa was fake and that the visa foil number 679702278, was issued to a former deputy minister of finance (name withheld). The acting Director-General of the Criminal Investigations Department (CID), Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP) Prosper Kwame Agblor, who made this known in Accra, said investigations into the

The leadership of the Junior Common Room (JCR) of the  Commonwealth Hall of the University of Ghana has withdrawn the suit challenging the university authorities for attempting to change the status of Commonwealth Hall into a mixed gender graduate hall.                                                                         The Commonwealth Hall Some representatives of the Hall in May this   year  sued the University seeking a number of reliefs including an order restraining the defendant from taking any step to shut down or convert the Commonwealth Hall into a post graduate mixed-gender hall. The plaintiff by a motion dated October 7, 2010 and an affidavit signed by the President of hall, Joseph Laari,claimed he had the consent of the members of the Hall to depose to the affidavit. The Legal Counsel of the University, Ms Akyaa Arhin, who disclosed this to the Daily Graphic, said the affidavit stated that the students were discontinuing the action against the university meani

A TASK force of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) last Saturday reduced a chain of unauthorised mobile phone shops at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle into a pile of debris. Some of the traders arrived for business on Monday morning to find their structures and wares demolished. When the Daily Graphic arrived at the scene, what was known to be a vibrant mobile phone shopping corner had been thrown into a state of disarray, with the traders cursing members of the task force. Containers and wooden structures had been crushed, with destroyed mobile phones and accessories scattered all over. The traders were seen retrieving the remnants of their goods from the rubble. Chairs, tables, plates and plastic ware belonging to food vendors were also scattered all over the place. Narrating the events leading to the demolition to the Daily Graphic, a mobile phone dealer, Mr Joseph Manu, said a team of policemen and the AMA task force arrived at the place at 5 a.m. and ordered him and others ou

GHANA has recorded its highest performance ever in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) by scoring 4.1 out of 10 in the latest ratings by Transparency International released yesterday. The latest report by the international anti-corruption body ranked Ghana as the seventh least corrupt country among 47 African countries and 62nd among 178 countries surveyed this year. This represents an improvement over Ghana’s 2009 ranking of 69 with a score of 3.9. The country scored 3.3 in 1999; 3.7 in 2008 and 3.9 in 2009. Botswana leads the African region with a score of 5.8, followed by Mauritius with 5.4; Cape Verde, 5.1; Seychelles, 4.8; South Africa, 4.5 and Namibia 4.4. Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria and Burundi are some of the most corrupt countries on the CPI ratings for this year. At the global level, Denmark, New Zealand and Singapore share the top spot as the least corrupt followed by Finland, Sweden, Canada and The Netherlands in that order. The CPI assessed the extent of corrupti

THE Executive Secretary of the Ghana Integrity Initiative, Mr Vitus AAzeem, has called on the Land Commission and other relevant government agencies to come out and set the record straight on issues concerning ‘land grabbing’ which has become a topical issue in the country. “GII calls for more transparency not only on the sale of government lands but on disposal of all government assets both in the past and currently, including Ghana @ 50 houses and cars,” he stated. Mr Azeem, who was speaking at the launch of this year’s edition of Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), said it was imperative for the government to provide evidence of payment by all beneficiaries and the rationale for any discounted prices. The CPI assessed the extent of corruption among public officials and politicians. It reflects the views from around the world, including those of experts living and working in the countries evaluated. “Our message is clear; across the globe, transpar