ODENEHO GYAPONG ABABIO DENIES ALLEGATION (PAGE 16)

THE immediate past President of the National House of Chiefs, Odeneho Gyapong Ababio II has denied media reports that he was sidelined during the recent tour by President John Evans Atta Mills to the Western Region.
He described the publication in “The Chronicle”, an Accra based newspaper as an erroneous attempt to embarrass him and create separation between him the sitting president.
Speaking at a news conference in Sekondi, Odeneho Gyapong Ababio said the publication also stated that he was sidelined by President Mills because he openly campaigned for the then ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) during the last general election.
He said he had no intention of litigating the matter, but the purpose of the news conference was to set the records straight and to deny that he was sidelined.
“I can tell you for a fact that, as a chief, I took part in the voting processes, but my vote was secret and I have not campaigned for any political party,” he stressed.
Odeneho Gyapong Ababio, who is also the Paramount Chief of Sefwi-Bekwai Traditional Area, said as a paramount chief, he received leaders of the various political parties and wished them well but he did not take any side.
He explained that when Prof. Mills arrived in the region, “I was given an invitation to attend the function at 10 a.m. but the time later changed to 3 p.m. so I returned to my traditional area to inform my sub-chiefs and elders to attend the durbar both in the southern and northern parts of the region”, he said.
“We prepared with our cultural ‘kete” dance and moved to the durbar grounds at Sefwi and I was part of the chiefs who welcomed the President; we even had a chat for about two minutes before he moved to the next chief” Odeneho Gyapong Ababio said.
He emphasised that he was shocked that the paper reported that he was sidelined.
“I can tell you that at the durbar grounds, there were chiefs from four paramount areas and traditionally, it is the Omanhene who takes the mike to welcome the President or VVIPs and that was done”, the Omanhene said.
Odeneho Gyapong Ababio stressed that during President Mills’ campaign tour of the area, he promised that he would be the president for all Ghanaians and he had fulfilled that promise through his open approach to issues.
Odeneho Gyapong Ababio used the opportunity to advise journalists to be circumspect in their reportage since they occupied very important positions and played very significant role of strengthening the country’s democratic process.

CREW OF US NAVAL SHIP ASSIST ESSIKADO COMMUNITY

THE crew of the United States Naval ship, HSV2 Swift, under the African Partnership Station (APS), have presented medical items worth more than $10,000 to the Essikado Government Hospital near Sekondi.
They also spent time to paint the hospital as part of their voluntary service to maintain good relationships with communities.
The crew members who are from Ghana, Togo, Nigeria, Benin, Cameroon, the US Navy and other African countries, also interacted with the chiefs and people of Essikado.
The Commander of the ship, Commander John Tolg of the US Navy, said the focus of the APS was to afford member countries the opportunity to share ideas on how to ensure maritime safety.
He said the move to interact with people and undertake community projects was meant to establish a good relationship between the US Navy and civilians.
“As we seek peace and safety in the maritime domain, it is also important that those on shore are made aware of the challenges and what the team under the APS is doing to combat drug trafficking and illegal fishing,” he said.
He said the APS had been very beneficial to each member country, saying, “Because each country has a style of carrying out its activities, we learn from one another.”
The Paramount Chief of the Essikado Traditional Area, Nana Kobina Nketsiah V, commended the US Navy for making time to interact with people in communities and undertaking projects aimed at supporting those communities.

WRC CALLS FOR MORE PROTECTION FOR WATER BODIES (SPREAD)

The Water Resources Commission (WRC) has called for a comprehensive institutional and legal framework to protect water bodies in the country.
The commission identified pollution, lack of a legal framework, improper land use and the inadequate reliable management of information as some of the difficulties associated with the safety and protection of water resources in the country.
An official of the commission, Mr Stephen Acheampong-Boateng, made the call on behalf of the commission at a workshop for a cross-section of the public, journalists, information officers, as well as officials from the district, municipal and metropolitan assemblies, in Takoradi in the Western Region.
Mr Acheampong-Boateng underscored the need for attitudinal change to arrest the situation, and said although there were laws to protect water bodies, their enforcement was weak, making it easy for people to destroy water bodies with impunity.
“If people followed the procedure and were educated on the importance of these water bodies to our existence things would have been different.
“If we continue, crop yield will reduce while waterborne diseases and cost of potable water production will increase,” he said.
For her part, Mrs Adwoa Munkua Dako, the Public Relations Officer of the commission, said WRC was mandated, among others, to make regulations for water resource management under Article 12 of Act 522.
She said Section 35 (1) of the Act also provided that the commission could by legislative instrument (LI) make regulations for prevention of existing use of water, controlling any change in the watercourse, current or cross current of any contained surface water.
Mrs Dako said the commission discharged its mandate by monitoring water quality, creating public awareness, developing policies, setting up of basin board and assessing groundwater, among others.
The commission, Mrs Dako said, also worked to foster co-operation with other stakeholders in the management of trans-boundary water resources and promote dialogue towards the establishment of permanent mechanisms for the management of international river basins.
She reminded the district assemblies, as custodians of natural resources, to work together with the Water Resources Commission to promote the safety and protection of water bodies.

THEFT OF SOUP, CAR BATTERIES RAMPANT AT TWIN-CITY (PAGE 29)

Some youth in some parts of the Sekondi/Takoradi Metropolis have resorted to breaking into people’s vehicles and kitchens and making away with cooked foods, soup and car batteries.
Some residents of Kweikuma have alleged that whenever they prepare food for the family, they realise the next day that thieves have broken into their kitchens and taken away pots containing the food.
Those who park their vehicles in front of their houses have also complained of the theft of their car batteries and car tapes in the night.
As a result of the alleged thefts, most residents who do not live in walled premises are compelled to carry the cooked food to their bedrooms for the fear of losing it to thieves in the night.
Some Assembly members have attributed the thefts to the high rate of unemployment in their electoral areas and expressed surprise that most of the youth were not just unemployed but also unemployable because they lacked employable skills.
Some of the Assembly members, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they had managed to get some of the youth to acquire skills but had abandoned the programmes in search of quick money.
They said two youth had been arrested in connection with some thefts in other parts of the metropolis.
One of them was seriously assaulted after he was apprehended for stealing soup and car batteries at dawn last Wednesday, but was saved by the police.
The Regional Police Command said they had received some complaints and were intensifying their patrols in the communities to ensure that the citizens were safe.

HIV/AIDS SENSITISATION WORKSHOP FOR MARKET WOMEN (PAGE 29)

The Ghana AIDS Commission and National Disaster Management Committee have organised an HIV/AIDS sensitisation programme for more than 1,500 market women and porters in the twin-city of Sekondi/Takoradi.
The focus was to ensure that various segments of the society were made aware of the importance of voluntary counselling and testing, self-discipline and non-stigmatisation of people living with the disease.
The Regional Director of NADMO, Mr Kofi Nyonkopa Arthur, said the regional office had over the years embarked on a campaign to help drum home the message of the need to support the national quest in reducing the pandemic.
He said awareness of the pandemic had been created across the world and at least everyone was aware of the dangers and the socio-economic effects on countries.
Mr Arthur said the NADMO-Ghana Aids Commission (GAC) collaboration was to re-echo the importance of self-control and the need to encourage people to test and know their status to avail themselves of the necessary interventions to manage their lives so that they could continue to contribute to the development of the country.
“It is very important for us to note that for a country to develop, its citizens have to be very healthy and of a sound mind,” he said.
He said Sekondi/Takoradi was chosen for the campaign because of its fast growing nature and commended the porters and traders who participated in it in their numbers.
Mrs Effie Josiah, a senior nursing officer at the Public Health Department of the regional hospital at Effia-Nkwanta took time to answer questions from the porters about how to be responsible.
She said the government had put in place certain interventions at various health facilities but the public were not availing themselves of them.
Mrs Josiah said it was gratifying that porters, traders and other members of the general public took time off their schedules to listen and partake in the counselling and testing segment.
Participants thanked the NADMO and GAC for the programme and assured them of their commitment to the fight the pandemic.

REGULATORY BODY NEEDED FOR TRANSPORT SECTOR (PAGE 29)

Stakeholders in the transport industry in the Western Region have called for the establishment of a regulatory body to take a second look at the over-liberalisation of the transport industry in the country.
The Western Regional Commander of the Motor Traffic and Transport Unit (MTTU) of the Ghana Police Service, Mr George Adusa-Poku, described the current over-liberalised system as chaotic.
He said another problem facing the industry was the recklessness on the roads in the region and blamed drivers of commercial vehicles belonging to personnel of the security agencies for the insurgence.
Mr Adusa-Poku said the police, prisons, army and personnel of other security agencies were the owners of most vehicles with offending drivers because “these drivers think they are above the law. They stop and load anywhere and even confront officers on duty with abusive language”.
This, he said, would not help the country’s commercial transport sector or bring about the needed safety on the roads and that if the industry was regulated to determine the number of vehicles that could be on the road at a time, which vehicle could be used as a taxi and where it could ply, it would bring some sanity to the system.
Mr Adusa-Poku said vehicles, especially taxis in the system, were too many and that many of them were not in a good shape or fit to be put on the road.
Besides the regulatory body, the regional MTTU commander stressed the need for passengers to change their attitudes and ensure that they did not patronise vehicles which picked passengers indiscriminately and at unauthorised places.
“It is about time passengers knew that drivers had relegated their safety to the background for the sake of the profit they would make,” he said.
He said when one visited the various terminals in the metropolis and other parts of the region, there were many vehicles waiting for their turn to load, and if passengers made use of the terminals they would not load passengers along the roads.
“If they did not get passengers along the roads, they would be compelled to come back to the station and load but if they get passengers on the street, the drivers would not go to the terminals to await for their turn to load,” he said.
The Western Regional Police Commander, Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCOP), Alhaji Hamidu Mahama, called for closer collaboration to ensure that sanity prevails on the road.
He said the country could not afford to lose its rich human resources to preventable accidents and that drivers should be mindful of the importance of their activities to the economy.
Other officials from the Ghana Private Road Transport Union and the Road Safety Commission called for a concerted effort to curb the carnage on the roads and the chaotic scenes in the metropolis.

COUNTRY LOSES MILLIONS TROUGH FISHY WOOD IMPORTS (PAGE 29)

The country is said to be losing millions of cedis in revenue as some timber and other importers have resorted to wrong descriptions to get wood products into the country in order to evade tax.
This followed the waiver of levies imported on logs and sawn lumber imported into the country to supplement the needs of the timber industry.
Some importers are alleged to be using wrong harmonised codes to describe processed woods as logs and sawn lumber, thereby unduly enjoying the waiver.
Others who also import processed wood into doors, frames, tables, among others, describe them as “Rotten Wawa” in order not to attract high tariffs.
As a result of these developments, the Timber Industry Development Division (TIDD) of the Forestry Commission, Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) and the Customs Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS) have joined forces to eliminate such acts.
At a meeting in Takoradi to discuss the way forward, the collaborators agreed that working in isolation, coupled with the non-sharing of information, gave such importers the chance to cheat the system to enrich themselves at the expense of the state.
They agreed that as a matter of urgency, they would share information since they all worked on a common platform for the country and would ensure that before importers or exporters brought in goods or exported them out of the country, the various entities had knowledge of what covering documents they would look out for.
In his presentation, the Head of Grading and Inspection Department of the TIDD, Mr B. I. Ahmed, said the country started importing commercial timber products such as pipe poles, raw curls, sliced/rotary veneers, logs and sawn lumber of various species for further processing since 1998.
He said available information which warranted the collaboration between the GPHA, CEPS and TIDD indicated that some importers of wood products brought in taxable species and branded them as rotten Wawa in order to evade tax.
Mr Ahmed said the commencement of the importation of these logs and lumber into the country was meant to supplement what was produced locally to meet the needs of the industry and ensure the sector did not lay off workers as the country’s stocks had dwindled drastically.
That, he said, should not give importers the chance to give wrong codes and brands to their imported products in order to evade tax which was much needed to speed up the country’s development.
“We have to realise that log imports were also to ease pressure on the country’s forests, sustain employment, keep industries running and avert the threat of companies relocating to other countries,” he said.
Mr Ahmed said importation of logs and sawn lumber meant further processing in the country to create and sustain jobs.
With other challenges at the moment, he said, importers of the wood products always failed to submit their documents to the TIDD for inspection.
The Executive Director of the TIDD, Mr N. Attah, expressed the hope that with the collaboration, wrong application of the harmonised codes leading to misnaming and misclassification of timber products to evade tax could be curbed.
CEPS and GPHA officials also gave a pledge to support such collaborative efforts to ensure that the due process was followed and proper documents attached to the imports and exports.