Month: October 2023

Dr Ernest Addison, Governor of the Bank of Ghana has signed the book of condolence opened at the Ga Mantse Palace in memory of the late Queenmother of the Ga State, Naa Dedei Omaedru III.

He pledged the support of the Bank towards the funeral preparations of the late Ga Manye.

Dr Addison was accompanied by a delegation, including Dr Maxwell Opoku-Afari, the First Deputy Governor,

The rest were Board Members including Dr Samuel Nii -Noi Ashong, Mr Andrew Boye-Doe and Mr Joseph Alhassan.

The Bank’s Secretary, Ms.Sandra Thompson and the Head of the Security, Wg CDR Kwame Asare Boateng were also part of the delegation.

The delegation presented items such as customary drinks, assorted soft drinks, bottles of water, and a cheque to support the funeral preparations.

‘The demise of the late Ga Manye is a matter of concern to us all. The Central Bank will lend its support for a befitting burial for the late Ga Manye. We are grateful for your warm reception,’ he said.

Ms. Sandra Thompson, the Bank’s Secretary, said over the years there had been a cordial relationship between the Ga State and the Bank.

She said the Bank had extended support to the Ga State in so many ways, adding that it would continue to do so in areas such as education.

‘The Bank of Ghana and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly is currently collaborating to build a three-storey eighteen-unit classroom block and a three-unit nursery block with ancillary facilities for the Independence Avenue 2 Cluster of Schools, a project which we hope to complete by the end of this year,’ Ms Thompson said.

The BoG delegation was warmly received by the Ga Mantse, King Tackie Teiko Tsuru II together with other traditional leaders in the Ga State.

King Tackie Teiko Tsuru II expressed his heartfelt gratitude to the Governor and Management of the Bank while also urging them to remain focused on discharging their mandate.

‘There are lots of challenges in Ghana but I entreat you to work diligently to deliver on your mandate. Do not be discouraged and it is not everything you do which will please people but then be focused and remain steadfast,’ he added.

Source: Ghana News Agency

The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) has enrolled six adolescent girls at Techiman in the Bono East Region in a non-formal training programme to acquire employable skills in support of better livelihoods.

The beneficiaries are all minors, aged between 15 and 17, who were single teenage mothers or victims of child-marriage.

They were trained in dressmaking and hairdressing to create jobs and wealth for themselves and their families for a secure socio-economic future.

This is to empower the adolescent mothers and survivors of child marriage to eke a living, address the menace of child marriage and sexual and gender-based violence, and improve reproductive health outcomes.

It is being implemented in six selected areas in the region; Techiman South and Nkoranza South municipalities, Techiman North, Nkoranza North, Pru East and West districts with the support of the Bono East Regional Coordinating Council.

The initiative broadly sought to reduce the prevalence of child marriage and improve the health, safety, and the general well-being of young girls and women.

Ms Julian Harrison Mutaah, the UNFPA Regional Focal Person at the RCC, said this during a monitoring exercise in Techiman and other project communities by a team of UNFPA officials to assess and evaluate the progress of implementation, achievements, challenges and lessons learnt.

She said the master apprentices had been provided with tools/equipment to facilitate their work to break the cycle of poverty, adolescent motherhood, and child marriage.

Highlighting some achievements since January, this year, Ms Mutaah said a group of trained Muslim men, known as ‘Male Champions’ had formed a club at Kintampo in the Kintampo North Municipality of the region to engage in house-to-house discussions and hold ‘parliamentary sittings’ to educate their peers about the threat of child marriage and gender-based violence.

She shared a testimony of a female beneficiary who, through the knowledge gained, was able to convince her uncle to stop giving out his teenage daughter for marriage, adding that another young man confessed he had stopped smoking because of the exposure through the training.

Source: Ghana News Agency

The youth of Komenda in the Komenda-Edina-Eguafo-Abrem Municipality of the Central Region have called on the Government to redesign the Komenda Sugar Factory into a fruit processing plant, through a liaison with the private sector.

That would add value to fruits, which were in abundance in the area, with some going waste due to the lack of preservation facilities, they said.

The youth called for an urgent step towards the revival of the factory to help fight poverty, create decent employment, open up the local economy, and make life meaningful for the people.

Mr Yaw Bayin, a youth leader in the community, told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) that eight years after commissioning the factory, the youth continued to loiter about without jobs, resulting in high social delinquencies.

The $35-million dollar Komenda Sugar Factory, built with an Indian Exim Bank grant, was inaugurated in May 2016, by the then President, Mr John Dramani Mahama, amid pomp and pageantry.

The factory was built to crush 1,250 tonnes of sugarcane per day to reduce Ghana’s annual sugar requirement, estimated at 375,000 tonnes.

Mr Bayin recalled how the harsh weather conditions, combined with the salty breeze from the Atlantic Ocean that lies about three kilometres from the factory, caused rapid corrosion of the metallic parts of the machinery.

In addition, weeds, until recently, had virtually taken over the factory, making it a haven for rodents and reptiles.

With abundant arable lands for growing sugarcane, Mr Bayin could not comprehend the wasting away of the magnificent factory set up to provide 7,300 direct and indirect jobs.

He recalled how thousands of sugarcane out-growers beamed with smiles of hope following the rebirth of the factory some couple of months ago, but their hopes had died out due to unfulfilled promises by the Government.

He bemoaned the inability of the factory’s management to secure a reliable raw material base to operationalise the factory.

‘The factory is our pride, our hope, and the venture that would earn many their livelihoods,’ he said.

Mr Okatakyi Ackon, the Director of Communications of the sugarcane out-growers, told the GNA in an interview that many of the nearly 3,000 out-growers currently produced to feed palm wine distillers in the area.

He gave the assurance that they were ready to support the re-operationalisation of the factory if the management put its house in order.

Upholding the concerns of the youth, a former worker, who pleaded anonymity, said the sad state of the factory was a major concern to all well-meaning residents of Komenda.

With obvious apprehensions, many felt dejected and disappointed as reassurances had yielded no positive results, he said.

The 26-year-old, unemployed, indicated that any further delay in putting the factory back on its wheels could deepen the woes of the youth.

The management of the factory, however, declined to speak on the issues.

Source: Ghana News Agency

More than 5,000 farmers in the Gomoa Central District of the Central Region have been given farming inputs to enhance their work and make agribusiness attractive and profitable.

They were provided with 6,000 cutlasses, 1,000 bags of fertilizer, 800 boxes each of weedicides and pesticides, and 2,500 wellington boots.

Mr Benjamin Kojo Otoo, the District Chief Executive of Gomoa Central, at a ceremony to present the items to the farmers, said the inputs were procured with the Assembly’s Common Fund to support farmers to increase their yields.

The beneficiaries were selected through the District Agricultural Department to ensure equitable distribution of the inputs to avoid complaints and discontents.

Under the Government’s planting for export and rural development, 200,000 seedlings of tree crops, including oil palm, coconut, mango and teak were supplied to farmers.

Mr Otoo said the Government would continue to create an enabling environment for better yield, and provide farmers with fertilizers, chemicals, seedlings and vegetable seeds to boost agriculture in the district.

The President Akufo- Addo led-Government would never disappoint in its expectation to improve agriculture, he said, and urged the farmers to beware of vain promises by some politicians.

He drew the farmers attention to the recent increment in producer price of cocoa, being one of the best decisions the government had taken to improve their living standards.

Mrs Naana Eyiah Quansah, the Deputy Interior Minister and MP for Gomoa Central, assured the farmers that government was prepared to invest heavily in agriculture and would continue to provide farm inputs, free of charge, to cushion them in their activities and reduce the economic hardships they faced.

She appealed to the farmers to rally strongly behind her to retain the parliamentary seat in 2024 to facilitate her support to the constituency.

The MP announced that government had approved the construction of a district police headquarters at Gomoa Central to wean it from the Agona Swedru District Police Command and urged the farmers to continue to support the Government to succeed.

Source: Ghana News Agency

A new manual for judicial officers concerning African common law, aimed at judges, lawyers, and law students, has been launched by a Court of Appeal judge and former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Seychelles.

“A Practical Approach to Evidence for Judicial Officers,” which was written by Dr Mathilda Twomey and her colleagues at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, was launched on Friday at the Palais de Justice, Ile du Port, in the presence of President Wavel Ramkalawan, who received a copy.

In an interview with the press, Twomey shared that the book will not only benefit judges when listening to a case but also “lawyers and law students in Seychelles, especially now that the University of Seychelles has launched its new degree on the law of Seychelles.”

“The manual addresses evidence law, something that Seychellois would appreciate learning more about. Many of them have exposure to the court but they do not understand when for example, a judge says they cannot accept a piece of certain evidence. There are certain rules that we need to follow. The book is more of a manual. What we did was choose more important topics that a judge can refer to when listening to a case,” said Twomey.

She outlined that in her role as a trial judge in Seychelles, one of the difficulties she encountered was resolving challenges to the admissibility of evidence as quickly as they arose.

“This was important to ensure that trials proceeded efficiently yet fairly. Pre-trial hearings help ensure compliance with discovery rules and reduce the risk of challenges to evidence adduced by parties at trial. However, I always wished for a quick ‘go-to’ manual to speedily resolve issues that could not be foreseen and arose during the trial,” she continued.

Aside from being a judge in Seychelles, Twomey is also the academic director of the Judicial Institute for Africa (JIFA) at the University of Cape Town, which is a partnership between the Democratic Governance and Rights Unit (DGRU) and the Southern African Chief Justices Forum (SACJF).

She shared her concerns with other judges in Seychelles and other African common-law jurisdictions she has met through her work at the University of Cape Town. Twomey outlined that though the countries share the same inherited laws of procedure from the United Kingdom, most of the jurisdictions were mixed, incorporating common law, civil law – French or Roman-Dutch law, Islamic law, and customary law.

The manual came to life through collaborative help from Twomey’s colleagues – Joelle Barnes, Michelle Ebrahim, and Jocelyne Hackett – at the University and in consultation with researchers throughout 13 African countries that have sources in common law. These countries are Botswana, Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

“We had developed our own rules of procedure through enactments and through our own respective case law, especially after independence. A comparative approach to evidence between our different jurisdictions, when difficulties arose, would not only light the way forward and lighten our load but also inspire us to adapt original sources to our respective local circumstances,” she explained.

Source: Seychelles News Agency