The District Chief Executive for the Bongo District, Alexis Adugdaa Ayamdor has inaugurated a 13 member team that will see to the timely implementation of the Street Naming and Property Numbering exercise in that district. Mr. Adugdaa in his inaugural statement noted that the exercise is dear to the President and as such, the deadline must be met at all cost.

He stressed that the Bongo District Street naming team must give off its best by devoting time and attention to details during the whole exercise.

The Bongo DCE pledged the District Assembly’s support to Street Naming and Property Numbering Team and warned that no single member of the team should have an excuse for not playing his or her required role in ensuring the success of the exercise.

He also tasked leadership of the team to write reports on every activity they undertake in the course of the exercise in order that at any point in time, he can also report to authorities above, the progress made by his district regarding this national exercise.

Acting Bongo District Coordinating Director, Jasper Adenyo urged the team members to put aside their individual egos and work together to put every member’s contribution in line with the overall objective of the naming and numbering exercise.

The Paramount Chief of the Bongo Traditional Area, Naba Baba Salifu Alemyaarum who witnessed the inauguration, observed that even though the Bongo District layout is well planned on paper, there has been haphazard development of buildings and other structures in the area. He called on the assembly’s planning and engineers unit to rectify the situation.

Source: A1 News | Bolgatanga, Ghana

The Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) Junior High School here in the Bolgatanga Municipality is in dire need of classroom furniture. The school currently has no tables and chairs and pupils have to always sit on the bare classroom floors for lessons.

The pupils together with the school authorities have had to contribute money to repair a few broken dual desks belonging to the school, to facilitate easy teaching and learning. Despite this little effort, some of the pupils still have to stand up for lessons and others sit in fours per a dual desk instead of three. T

his adversely affecting teaching and learning in the school. Also, pavilions which were turned into classroom blocks for the school can no longer accommodate the growing population of the school thereby making the classrooms congested.

Pupils and teachers of the SDA Junior High School are frustrated by the situation and are appealing help.

 By: Joshua Asaah | A1radioonline.com | Ghana

President John Mahama has urged the Naayiri of Mamprugu Traditional Area, Naa Bohagu Abdulai Sheriga to join efforts in brokering lasting peace in Bawku. The president said he had initiated some processes aimed at bringing closure to Dagbon chieftaincy crisis but is worried about the situation in Bawku.

He was speaking at a grand durbar of the chiefs and people of the Mamprugu Traditional area at Nalerigu in the East Mamprusi District of the Northern Region.

The region had gained notoriety for violent ethnic clashes between Mamprusis and Kusasis as well as Abudus and Andanis but there has been relative peace over the past few months. The conflicts have claimed hundreds of innocent lives and destroyed properties worth several millions of cedis. The president is convinced that with the assistance of Naa Bohagu Abdulai Sheriga, there would be peace in Bawku.

Responding to the appeals by Naa Abdulai Sheriga for development projects to be brought into the region, the president said there are plans to invest over One Billion Ghana Cedis to expand the road networks in the region as well as embark on other developmental projects but stressed that all these will amount to nothing if there is no peace in the area.

Credit: MyJoyonline

Members of the Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG) will begin a sit down strike today, Monday, January 20, 2014 to demand better wages. This is according to the Principal of the St. John Bosco’s College of Education, Alfred Ndago.

He was speaking at the Seventh Matriculation Ceremony of the St John Bosco’s College of Education at Navrongo.

The St. John Bosco’s College of Education admitted its all-time highest number of first year students this year.  The college admitted 476 students. They include 51 students for the technical and vocational department, 168 for the mathematics and science department and 257 for general arts.

Speaking before administering the matriculation oath for the fresh students, Principal of the St. John Bosco’s College Education, Alfred Ndago emphasized the importance of teachers to the education sector of Ghana but revealed that members of the Colleges of Education Teachers Association of Ghana (CETAG) will begin a sit down strike on Monday, January 20, 2014 to demand better wages.

He therefore called on government and other stakeholders in education to dialogue with CETAG on their demands because the strike will have a ripple effect on the country’s education.

The St. John Bosco’s College of Education principal also said the school this year admitted the 476 first year students according to its resource capacity.

By: Albert Sore | A1radioonline.com | Ghana

The operation of drinking spots and pubs seems to have now become a very lucrative business in the Upper East Regional capital, Bolgatanga as many residents are setting up metal containers in various corners of the municipality to sell alcoholic beverages.

According to research conducted last year by the Coalition of NGOs in health, the Upper East Region led the rest of the country in terms of alcohol consumption rate with the youth being the most affected group.

Upon entry into the Bolgatanga Municipality and some other areas in the Upper East Region, what you see at first sight are metal containers or kiosks operating   drinking spots. Local gin referred to as ‘akpetashie’, the locally brewed pito, beers, wines and all kinds of hard liquor are sold in these drinking bars.

One no longer has to move beyond a stone’s throw to get to a drinking spot in the Bolgatanga municipality. Therefore owning a drinking bar is now believed to be the most flourishing business of the day in Bolgatanga and perhaps the Upper East region at large. These drinking spots are owned by different categories of individuals like politicians, business men and women, health workers and teachers.

This is an obvious indication that residents of Bolgatanga especially the youth are engaging in serious alcoholism.

The big question then is why do people consume alcohol excessively, considering the health implications involved?  Some members of general public said they drink as sense belongingness to a certain group of people. Others said they drunk in order to deal with their frustrations, another group said they did for fun and other did it for no known reasons at all .

Apart from drinking alcohol or “breaking bottles” as the youth prefer to refer to it, some youth in the region are engaged in the smoking of marijuana popularly called wee. The resulting impact of this apart from it being a contributing factor to poverty in the region is damage to the brain according to Deputy Director of Psychiatric Nursing, Akagwire Peter Ayurezoya.

Women in the region are not left out of the intake of hard liquor. A community mental health officer of the Ghana Health Service, Upper East Region, Amisore Gloria says not only can alcohol intake among women lead to marital problems, it can also affect the female reproductive organ

The rate at which drinking spots are springing up in this region brings to mind, the question of what the Municipal and District Assemblies and other regulatory bodies like the Ghana Tourism Authorithy are doing to check the phenomenon.

The imposition of heavy taxes on all alcoholic beverages as a way of discouraging the importation of alcoholic beverages into the region has been suggested by many opinion leaders as a good measure to reduce the consumption of alcohol.

 By: Joshua Asaah | A1radioonline.com | Ghana

BBC and former host of Joy FM’s Super Morning Show Komla Dumor is dead.

The presenter of the Focus of Africa programme on BBC died, Saturday morning in London after a short illness Myjoyonline.com has learnt.

Former CEO OF Kumasi Asante Kotoko Herbert Mensah confirmed the death in an interview with Joy News.

His wife is a neighbour to Dumor in London and was present when the doctors pronounced the BBC presenter dead. Mensah would not give any further details on the circumstances surrounding the death except to add that Esther Cobbah, head of Stratcomm Africa, and a friend to the Dumor family has been  appointed to speak on the family’s behalf.

Komla Dumor was on set Friday evening when he hosted the BBC Focus of Africa programme. It was to be his last. He was only last week nominated to be the face of the BBC for the World Cup in Brazil this summer.

The ace Ghanaian journalist, 2003 winner of the  GJA Journalist of the year, hosted the Joy FM Super Morning Show for ten years before proceeding to the BBC in 2006 where he hosted a number of programmes including the BBC World News, Focus on Africa, Network Africa.

He was the only West African news reader on the BBC World news until his death.

Dumor achieved his feat in journalism without a journalism background.

He studied medicine but he changed course and graduated from the University of Ghana with a BSc in Sociology and Psychology and from Harvard University with an MA in Public Administration.

His unique voice, passion, and an incredible attention to detail catapulted him to higher heights in journalism. He had interviewed some of the greatest world leaders, including former US president Bill Clinton, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

He was married to Kwansema Dumor, with whom he had three children. He was 41.

Source: Myjoyonline.com

A district security council task force has been put in place in the Talensi district to ensure that residents of the area do not engage in illegal gold mining also known as galamsey. This is according the district chief executive for the area, Edward Awonoore.

Speaking exclusively to A1 News at his office at the Talensi District Assembly, Mr. Awonoore said in line with the president’s directive to all DCEs to clamp down on illegal mining, he has taken serious security steps to make the directive work, considering the fact that his district has a lot of mining areas.

He also said compared to other districts, the Talensi District is quite young but some work has been done in the area of health and the district clinic will be raised to a hospital status soon.

 He added access to potable drinking water in parts of the district where there is water scarcity has also been given a major boost.

The Winkongo-Tongo road which was awarded for construction in the year 2012 will soon see a major facelift. This is the assurance that has been given by Talensi District Chief Executive, Edward Awunuure in an exclusive interview with A1 News.

He said due to complains made by road users and people living close to the road about too much dust from the construction, he has instructed the contractor to water the road while waiting for bitumen to arrive for the tarring.

Mr. Awunuure expressed satisfaction with work-done so far on the 7 kilometer Winkongo-Tongo road and called on road users to be careful when plying the road

A1 News checks on the road revealed that culverts for the road have been constructed while gravel is being spread on it.

Mr. Awunuure added that the district is working towards procuring a grader for the construction of access roads in communities of the Talensi district.

The Talensi DCE also said additional classroom blocks will be built in the area while communities with no access to electricity will be connected to the national grid this year.

 By: Joshua Asaah | A1radioonline.com | Ghana

Only final year students of the various Senior High Schools in the Upper East Region returned to school on Monday evening as the schools reopened for the second term of the 2013/2014 academic year.

Students in the junior classes will have to remain at home until further notice. This is because government has still not paid feeding grants which are in arrears to the schools.

Last week, there were hints in the media regarding a possible closure of the schools on Monday, January 13, 2014 with Upper East based civil society and advocacy group, BONABOTO calling on government to intervene and avert the situation. However, it appears nothing has still been done by the government.

Many heads of schools have remained tight-lipped on what exactly is being done about the situation but A1 News checks in schools such as the Bolgatanga Girls’ Senior High School, Navrongo Senior High School and Bawku Senior High School revealed that only the final year students have been asked to return school. The rest of the students will have to remain at home until further notice.

This is a stopgap measure adopted by the heads of the schools because there is no adequate food at the moment to feed all the students and it appears to be the case in the Northern and Upper West Regions as well.

By: Albert Sore | A1radioonline.com |  Ghana