THE THOUGHTS ROOM

Story: Jasmine Arku THE Coalition of NGOs in Water and Sanitation (CONIWAS) has raised doubts as to whether government’s 2011 budget statement to construct 20,000 boreholes over a five-year period would come to fruition. On the average, 4000 boreholes are expected to be constructed annually, however, according to the group, the 2011 budget statement did not provide corresponding financial resources which would facilitate the drilling process and construction of the boreholes. Although government in September 2010 signed on to the Sanitation and Water for All (SWA) Compact to do more to improve sanitation and sustain gains in water delivery , it was revealed by CONIWAS that the budget did not reflect the funding commitments to spend US$ 200 million annually as affirmed in the Compact. At a press conference themed “Financing WASH sector through the Ghana SWA Compact; Where are we”, CONIWAS demanded of government to indicate how it was going to fund the projects since the current budget f...

Tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS remain the leading cause of death among the inmates of the country’s prisons. Out of 84 deaths recorded in the prisons in 2009, 19 resulted from TB, while 11 were from HIV/AIDS, with malaria being the cause of three deaths. Other diseases such as anaemia, liver disease, septic shock, cardiac attack, asthmatic attack, rabies, among others, were identified as the other causes of death among the inmates. The Chief Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Prisons Service, ASP Courage Atsem, in an interview with the Daily Graphic, said one problem facing the service was the inability to screen convicts for HIV before they were put into the prisons. That, he said, was because HIV/AIDS screening was voluntary and, therefore, prisons officials could not subject anyone to forced screening. On TB infections, he said the Contagious Disease Prison (CDP) at Ankaful provided services for inmates to manage the disease, after which they were sent back to their respective prisons...

Story: Jasmine Arku Seven hundred and seven foreigners, mainly Nigerians, are serving various sentences in the country’s prisons. The inmates, including Chinese, Togolese, Beninois, Liberians, Camerounians, Americans, British and other African and Western nationals, are serving various sentences for crimes, including narcotics and armed robbery. The Chief Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Prisons Service, ASP Courage Atsem, who disclosed the statistics to the Daily Graphic, said apart from the Ashanti Region, there were foreigners in the prisons in other regions. In a separate interview, the Head of Public Relations at the Ghana Immigration Service, ACP Francis Palmdeti, explained that Nigerians dominated the number of foreigners in the prisons probably because they constituted the highest number of expatriates in the country. He said there had been a drastic increase in Nigerian expatriates arriving in the country over the years and indicated that 102, 657 Nigerians legally arriv...

Story: Jasmine Arku THE Ministry of Education has pledged to support the Akropong and Wa Schools for the blind with $50,000 each to meet their educational needs. The beneficiary schools have, therefore, been asked to present an invoice of items needed by the schools by the end of the coming week. This was made known by the Minister of Education, Mrs Betty Mould-Iddrisu, at the Visual Impairment Teacher Training (VIIT) Workshop which was launched in Accra. The VIIT workshop, made possible by the Special Education Division (SpED) of the Ghana Education Service (GES) in partnership with the Royal Dutch Vision of Vision International, a centre of expertise for the blind and partially sighted people in Netherlands, is a three-year project involving 10 training sessions on learners with visual impairment in an inclusive education setting. The project seeks to train and equip resource and mainstream teachers with the appropriate knowledge and skills to support children with special needs. It ...

Story: Jasmine Arku The Children’s Act, 1998 (Act 560), was enacted to reform and consolidate the law relating to children, to provide for the rights of the child, maintenance and adoption, regulate child labour and apprenticeship, for ancillary matters concerning children generally and to provide for related matters. Sub-section One of the Welfare Principle in the Children’s Act indicate that the best interest of the child shall be paramount in any matter concerning a child, while Sub-section Two states that the best interest of the child shall be the primary consideration by any court, person, institution or other body in any matter with a child. The demonstration by some youth last Tuesday at the Madina Zongo Junction threw the area into chaos and students and pupils of the Faith Community Baptist Complex of Schools faced life-threatening situations when the police fired tear gas, rubber and live ammunition to disperse angry youth protesting the take-over of a parcel of land by the ...

THE Accra Diocese of the Association of Anglican Clubs (AAC), a christian social networking group of the Anglican Church, has dug the ground for the construction of a four-unit classroom block for the St James Anglican School at Teiman. The project, estimated at GH¢86,000, is expected to be completed in November this year. The President of AAC, Mr Seth Larmie, expressed his appreciation to the chief and people of Teiman for making it possible for the club to endeavour to undertake such a project. He assured the school authorities that the club would do its best to provide the materials needed to make teaching and learning easier. Mr Larmie said funds required for the project were obtained through a fund-raising ceremony held in Accra by AAC members. He, therefore, thanked the members of the club who had contributed in diverse ways to ensure that the project became a reality. Mr Larmie said since its inception the group had embraced the principle of giving and focusing attention on impr...

THE Indian Women's Association in Ghana has raised funds to support breast cancer awareness activities, diagnosis and treatment in the country. The Vice President of the association, Mrs Lavina Amarnani, said the money would be given to the Radiotherapy Department of the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital to help women who diagnosed with cancer and undergoing treatment at the centre. Mrs Amarnani, who is a breast cancer survivor, with support from two other survivors, Vanisha Daryanani and Nutan Mahbubani, shared their experiences with the guests. Mrs Amarnani said she was diagnosed with cancer at an early stage when she detected a lump in her breast during a self-examination. For fear of what it could be, she went to the doctor and was diagnosed of the disease. She said she underwent surgery after which she went through various stages of chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Sharing her experience, Mrs Daryanani said she was diagnosed with breast cancer when she went to see her doctor during a n...

Story: Jasmine Arku THE Chairman of the Ghana Education Campaign Coalition (GNECC), Mr Bright Appiah, has urged the government to demonstrate its commitment towards promoting functional adult literacy in the country. This, he said, could be done by increasing the budgetary allocation for functional adult literacy to the international accepted benchmark of three per cent of the education sector budget. He noted that currently, the one per cent of the education sector budget allocated to functional adult literacy was not acceptable. Mr Appiah was speaking at a durbar organised by GNECC to climax activities marking this year’s Global Action Week, an initiative of the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) to network with other organisations world-wide and advocate quality education. Present at the durbar were students from O’Reilley Senior High School, Garrison Basic School, Madina 2 Junior High School, members of the Kpobiman Women's Association and other civil society organisations. Th...

Story: Jasmine Arku Amnesty International (AI), a human rights advocacy group, has called on the government to abolish the death penalty in the country. The group said as of the end of 2010, 123 prisoners, including three women, were serving on death row, although no executions had been carried out in the past 10 years. The Board Chairman of AI, Ghana, Mr Vincent Adzahile-Mensah, made the call on behalf of the group when he launched the 2011 Amnesty International Report on the state of human rights in 157 countries, including Ghana, in Accra yesterday. "It is unnecessary to keep such a law in the country's books, since it has outlived its usefulness," he said. Rather, he recommended that an alternative but appropriate penalty could replace the existing law. Mr Adzahile-Mensah noted that findings made by the human rights organisation had indicated that countries which retained the death penalty law had higher rates of crime, compared to those that had abolished the law. Th...

Jasmine Arku AN average of 120 juveniles, aged between 12 and 18, are admitted to the Senior Correctional Centre of the Ghana Prisons Service every month. While some of the juveniles are admitted for various crimes, ranging from stealing to narcotics, others are sent there by their parents or guardians for exhibiting various forms of deviant behaviour at home. In 2009, 1,457 juveniles were admitted, as against 1,410 in 2008. The Chief Public Relations Officer of the Ghana Prisons Service, ASP Courage Atsem, in an interview with the Daily Graphic, said the increase in child delinquency needed to be a source of worry to the country. He attributed the problem generally to lack of parental care and control, noting that juveniles who fell foul of the law were eligible to stand trial under the laws of the country. Such juveniles, he said, were tried at the juvenile courts and, if found guilty, made to serve a minimum sentence of six months and a maximum of two years. ASP Atsem said while juv...