A steel bridge in Navio, in the Kassena-Nankana District of the Upper East Region, remains unfixed 11 months after its collapse. The steel bridge collapsed after a heavy-duty articulated truck loaded with rosewood used it.
The 30-year-old bridge, which already had severe structural defects, could not withstand the weight of the truck, thus leading to its total collapse.
When the DCE for the area, Gerard Ataogye, spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East show in September last year, he mentioned that steel parts for thereconstruction of the bridge were underway.
“It is a very wide river so what we did in the dry season was to, within the river, create a place for cars and motorbikes to ply. With these heavy rains, all that has been washed away. Myself and the hardworking regional minister met the minister for roads and he assured us of working on it. The point is, a team came to check [the broken bridge] and considering the wide nature of it [the river], they tried to see if they can shift and use concrete but the technical people are saying the steel bridge would be the best … in our conversation with the sector minister, [it came to light] that they are importing steel materials from the UK. When it [the steels] come, they will work on it,” he said.
Despite the information provided by the DCE earlier, the situation remains unchanged. When the Assemblyman for the Navio Electoral Area, Roland Apugibo, spoke on the Day Break Upper East Show today, February 6, 2023, he said there have been no positive responses from the Assembly.
“Over the past 11 months, nothing concrete has happened. To be frank with you, we made so many appeals, wrote so many letters, and nothing concrete, I can say, has been done,” he said.
Mr. Apugibo explained that even before the collapse of the bridge, he had reached out to the assembly to help correct the defects in the bridge. After the entire collapse of the bridge, he was informed that the scope of work fell beyond the capacity of the Assembly. As such, details of what needed to be done were sent to the Roads Ministry.
The situation poses grave danger to residents who ply the route, according to the Assemblyman.
In 1992, you began your political career when your late uncle Joe Kanchi signed a membership card of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) for you under the ebony tree in Mirigu-Gonum.
You have since participated in all political activities representing the NDC at all levels.
It all began in the Kassalingo Community in Mirigu of the Upper East Region of Ghana. You started as a party agent, PRO and slightly missed the position of Chairmanship at the Constituency level in 2014.
We knew you would have been a good Chairman but maybe God had just asked you to wait for the ultimate time which is now.
Since that election, you have become a household name in the Constituency and the Region particularly among the NDC family. You have turned down proposals by constituents for you to put yourself up for the parliamentary primaries for obvious reasons.
You have earned many accolades to your name; unifier, humble, affable, peaceful, friendly, team leader, people centered, passionate, compassionate and development oriented they say you are.
You’re truly a unifier and reconciliatory in nature. Once you tried in 2014 and weren’t successful, you put it behind you and worked hard for the party in various capacities at various levels. You supported all NDC candidates in cash, material and human skills over the years. You have consistently dedicated your time, shredded energy and committed your rather scarce resources to work for the party in all subsequent elections.
Little wonder therefore that, a delegate had this to say about you. “people and the NDC party are the reason why Abirigo is not so rich”. This may sound as a comic relief and qualifies as a funny meme. Yet that is the level people know your selfless sacrifices to humankind.
Holy scripture also captures it in a manner so unequivocal when it stated, “service to mankind is service to God”. I guess it’s time to serve God in the service of mankind.
Another delegate said, “As for Hon. Abirigo, he can give his last one cedi to people and go hungry”. This is how well you are known for, because when you worked as Public Relations Officer for the Kassena-Nankana Mutual Health Insurance Scheme as the key publicity and registration officer, they said you spent all your money registering for the aged and the needy for over four years.
You have persisted in caring for people and the NDC party over the years and they have good records of you in their hearts.
You have shown consistency and drive to lead the NDC in the Constituency all this while and this is your time. The calls for you to lead your party, in the constituency, is now resoundingly louder. But unlike the calls to Pontious Pilate that sounded “CRUCIFY HIM! CRUCIFY HIM!!’ Yours is sounding “CROWN HIM! CROWN HIM!!.. It echoes from the East, to the West and to the North and south, echoes with a resounding and unanimous magnitude. It resonates through the vicissitudes of time sending signals into the ears of innocent children, the youth, women, the aged, able and the disabled of our constituency.
For it is written that, ‘’I the Lord have spoken! and you must remember that, the tide in the affairs of man is not static’’. It moves. Also, remember what happened to Jonah may repeat itself when you try to run away from these calls. And do not be afraid. Just like it happened to Moses, I have good news for you:
Selflessness and peaceful
From the East to the West, delegates have concluded that you deserve their votes. They talk about your selflessness and crave for peace, unity and development in the constituency.
Your contributions, efforts and commitments to see a lasting peace particularly in the Doba- Kandiga area specifically is highly commendable. Delegates have the firm belief that you would be a developmental Member of Parliament and therefore, you deserve the votes this time around.
Team player
You have proven beyond reasonable doubt you are a team player and relate well with every community and section in the constituency without being discriminatory against people due to their political or community belongingness.
The name Abirigo resonates in every nook and cranny of the constituency. In Chiana, Nakong, Kayoro, Paga, Nakolo, Navio, Sirigu, Kandiga and many others, the name Abirigo is a household name. A young man met us for the first time in Accra and this was what he said “ohh so this is the popular Abirigo?”.
On many occasions, you have worked with constituents in the East, West and North for your party the NDC. The delegates remember every bit of your sacrifices for your party.
They see how you easily relate with them. They see your positive party working relationships and they are determined to reward your leadership should you put yourself up.
Your humility and respect to all manner of persons.
Your humility and respect towards both young and old is widely talked about and delegates really appreciate your strong spirit and sense of humility.
In fairness, you have no match in this race to lead the party in Chiana-Paga Constituency. The delegates have been communicating that the race is between Hon. Abirigo and all the rest put together. Yes, that is what they say about you.
Abirigo brings fresh, firm, decisive, trustworthy and reliable leadership.
Grassroots party membership are yearning for your strong and top notch leadership to reinvigorate party activities in the constituency.
Your courage and strong leadership and your likeability identity is required to ensure the party’s victory of 2024 in the constituency.
The delegates are waiting to endorse you on May 13, 2023.
Bilingualism and Universal .
Given the dynamics of the constituency, you come as a universal and unique person that attracts more votes for party come 2024 because you speak both Kasem and Gurene fluently.
The Peoples’ Project
Everyone is already talking about the Peoples’ Project that you intend to unveil. They have no doubt that Project when implemented will create employment for the youth in the constituency and uplift them out of poverty as it is focused on the people.
Delegates are anxiously waiting to endorse the Peoples’ Project come May 13, 2023. Delegates are delighted to know you are leading in the race to become the Member of Parliament for the Paga-Chiana Constituency for their interest and they believe what you have done on your own you can do greater things when you become their MP.
Indeed, Hon Abirigo THIS IS YOUR TIME, I HEAR THE VOICE OF THE LORD CALL YOUR NAME TO STEP FORWARD FOR IT IS YOUR TIME.
It is not debatable. All other candidates are just trying. But your is a call to divine duty. “Go ye therefore and subdue the votes and commit ye therefore to the service of the people”. It’s well with you.
Your name, Atayure, is no mere coincidence. You have the name indeed. You have the greatest of names. Go make the numbers.
David Adumbire
The writer is a researcher, PhD Candidate at University of Ghana, (UG)
For the third consecutive year, Ghana failed to improve on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released by Transparency International (TI).
Results published today show that Ghana’s score of 43 out of 100 in the 2022 CPI has remained the same since 2020. The country tied for 72nd (with Benin, Bulgaria, Senegal and South Africa) out of 180 countries.
The CPI uses impartial surveys from experts and business leaders to score and rank countries by the perceived level of corruption in their public sectors. It uses a scale of zero (perceived as highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived as very clean).
The DCE for Talensi in the Upper East Region, Thomas Duanab Wuni Pearson, shared his thoughts on the nation’s current ranking, saying that it demonstrates the progress of the nation.
“Three years running, if we are still pegged at the same place and scoring the same thing, it means that we have arrived. It is now up to us to look into it. It means it [the corruption] has stopped at a certain point. All that we do is work and ensure that it improves. If it had gone up and down, it would have shown that we are confused as to what we are doing. But we are stable, and it shows that we are improving. We have always built institutions to deal with these things. If the OSP does what it is supposed to do, as it is doing now, it tells us that there will be a remarkable improvement in the future. We are making progress,” he said.
For the concerns raised about the independence of the OSP in the fight against corruption, Mr. Wuni Pearson explained that as time goes on, the issues around the office would be fine-tuned to achieve maximum efficiency.
“Institutions start and become perfect as they move along. You don’t start an institution and think that the next morning, you should have all the ingredients. Hitherto, we didn’t have it. Now we have it. Where do we want to move it to?” he asked.
The Talensi DCE reiterated the President’s position that the government is doing the best it can to be able to fight corruption.
The National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA) is warning service providers against illegally charging patients for drugs, consumables, and services covered under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). The Authority explained that copayment systems, while legally accepted in other jurisdictions, have not been accepted and formalised into the Ghanaian healthcare system, and as such, additional charges not sanctioned by the Authority are deemed illegal.
“Yes the complaints are there. The complaints of illegal charges, which people call co-payment. There’s no co-payment in Ghana. It is a formal system of payment that people practise. We do not practise it. So if anyone talks of co-payment, it is illegal charges. We have signed a contract with you, and we will pay you this much for this service rendered. If you go ahead and charge anything beyond that, it is illegal.”
Kasimu Abdulai, the Ag. Upper East Regional Director of the National Health Insurance Authority (NHIA), shared these concerns when he spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show.
Mr. Abdulai added that to address concerns related to illegal charges, the Authority had set up co-payment committees across the region to receive complaints, and act on them appropriately.
The committees are made up of district and municipal directors, accountants, and PROs of the NHIA.
“We have established formal committees from the regional level to the district levels, which are being supervised by a national committee to handle, specifically, the co-payment issues,” he said.
Shafiq Siita, a senior Monitoring and Evaluation Officer with the NHIA in the Upper East Region explained that the Authority had taken issues around co-payment seriously because it affected the image and relevance of the Authority.
“Issues about co-payment are very critical to the integrity and sustainability of the NHIA. So the NHIA is very serious about dealing with complaints,” he said.
The government’s ability to use funds judiciously is being called into question. John Paul Danka, a member of the NDC’s Regional Communication Team, has opined that had the government used the Ghc21 billion gathered during the fight against COVID-19 judiciously, it would not have been forced to include individual bond holders in the ongoing Domestic Debt Exchange Programme.
“Corruption is worse than any pandemic that would happen to us. When pandemics come, we form associations and get solutions for them. Corruption is geographic and institution specific. Once it affects you, if you realise that corruption is affecting you, if you don’t do anything to fight it, then you will appreciate the consequences. Nobody would come from his country to come and help you to fight corruption. If you pick the COVID-19 expenditure report alone, what has gone to waste in terms of corruption alone. If we had dealt with that, we would have solved the problem of individual bondholders. Their principals, their interests and whatever it is, we would have given it to them,” he said.
Mr. Danka’s comments were in relation to the country’s current standing on the Corruption Perception Index. He spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show.
For the third consecutive year, Ghana failed to improve on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released by Transparency International (TI).
Results published today show that Ghana’s score of 43 out of 100 in the 2022 CPI has remained the same since 2020. The country tied for 72nd (with Benin, Bulgaria, Senegal and South Africa) out of 180 countries.
The CPI uses impartial surveys from experts and business leaders to score and rank countries by the perceived level of corruption in their public sectors. It uses a scale of zero (perceived as highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived as very clean).
Persons interested in leading their respective parties into the 2024 general election at the constituency level may have to be willing to expend more than Ghc200,000 to run their campaigns; successful or not. This is according to anti corruption campaigner, Vitus Azeem.
The increased cost of securing the nod to lead the party in the constituency could be associated with inflation, the value of the cedi, and, more importantly, the excessive monetization of the Ghanaian election process.
With the huge associated costs, corruption is fueled at an unimaginable scale.
Mr. Azeem shared these sentiments when he spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show today, about Ghana’s standing on the Corruption Perception Index by Transparency International.
“Our politics is so monetized. Without money, you cannot even win an assembly election. How about national elections? The amount of money people spend in primaries; they don’t spend less than Ghc200,000. With the inflation and exchange rate and all that, it is going to be more this time,” he said.
For the third consecutive year, Ghana failed to improve on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released by Transparency International (TI).
Results published today show that Ghana’s score of 43 out of 100 in the 2022 CPI has remained the same since 2020. The country tied for 72nd (with Benin, Bulgaria, Senegal and South Africa) out of 180 countries.
The CPI uses impartial surveys from experts and business leaders to score and rank countries by the perceived level of corruption in their public sectors. It uses a scale of zero (perceived as highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived as very clean).
Vitus Azeem, an anti-corruption activist and the former Executive Director of the Ghana Integrity Initiative, is concerned about the level of corruption that is escalating in the nation.
Mr. Azeem noted that corruption had gotten worse under each successive government, which is a circumstance that should raise severe red flags.
His comments were in relation to the recent Corruption Perception Index.
For the third consecutive year, Ghana failed to improve on the Corruption Perception Index (CPI) released by Transparency International (TI).
Results published today show that Ghana’s score of 43 out of 100 in the 2022 CPI has remained the same since 2020. The country tied for 72nd (with Benin, Bulgaria, Senegal and South Africa) out of 180 countries.
The CPI uses impartial surveys from experts and business leaders to score and rank countries by the perceived level of corruption in their public sectors. It uses a scale of zero (perceived as highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived as very clean).
Speaking on the Day Break Upper East Show today, Mr. Azeem was worried about Ghana’s fight against corruption.
“It wouldn’t get any better; especially now that we are entering the 2024 election. Politicians would be looking for more money to campaign and we the electorate, some of us would be looking for more money from the politicians. And so, it is going to be bad. It is not going to be better maybe within the next 5 to 10 years. It wouldn’t be better. From my observation, with every change in government, the new government tends to be more corrupt than the previous one.”
The mode of appointing public officials, according to Mr. Azeem, helps fuel corruption.
“Public officers are appointed based on their actual or perceived affiliation to the party and so some of them are called upon to contribute to the party if they want to maintain their positions,” he said.
The anti corruption campaigner added that corruption had become so pervasive because “our politics is so monetized. Without money, you cannot even win an assembly election. How about national elections? The amount of money people spend in primaries; they don’t spend less than Ghc200,000. With the inflation and exchange rate and all that, it is going to be more this time.”
Rex Asanga, the MCE of the Bolgatanga, is appealing to relevant stakeholders in health to assist the municipality in strengthening the implementation of universal healthcare in rural areas.
According to the MCE, out of the 38 Community Health-Based Planning Services compounds dotted around in the municipality, only 15 have the basic structures to function.
The rest are either operating under trees or in uncompleted structures.
The situation, he says, requires urgent attention from individual organisations, as the government alone can not achieve the needed rapid infrastructural development.
“The primary focus of the municipality in the area of health is to achieve basic primary healthcare delivery.”
“But we are not able to do that because of the challenges we are confronted with; such that out of the 38 CHPS compounds planned by the Municipal Health Directorate, only 15 have some form of basic structure to operate in; such as an OPD, nurses’ quarters. The rest have no structures. But we are working on rehabilitating some of them as an assembly, but we need support from anybody.”
Mr Asanga made this known to the media when the assembly made a donation of two tricycle ambulances to Sumbrungu and Sherigu health centres.
The donation, he indicated, forms part of the Assembly’s efforts to improve quality healthcare delivery in rural areas. Adding that the donated ambulances came from the Northern Development Authority as part of its support to the various assemblies.
He encouraged the beneficiary CHIPs compounds and residents to contribute to the general functioning of the ambulances.
Some Oil Marketing Companies(OMCs) have started increasing prices of petroleum products at the pumps from today, Wednesday, February 1, 2023 as anticipated.
One of the market leaders, GOIL, is now selling a litre of petrol at ¢15.25, from the previous ¢13.60.
Diesel on the other hand is going for ¢15.90 per litre, from the previous ¢15.52.
Other OMCs are expected to follow suit by announcing new fuel prices later today.
Ahead of the announcement of increases in fuel prices today, the Institute for Energy Security (IES) predicted between 7% and 13% jump in the prices of petrol, diesel and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG), from February 1, 2023, for the next two weeks.
According to the IES, the rise in domestic fuel prices, is due to the sharp depreciation of the cedi during the last two weeks and the rising international fuel prices as observed on the global S&P Platts platform.
The energy think tank pointed out that the increase in fuel prices would be occasioned in spite of government’s receipt of approximately 41,000 metric tonne of diesel under its “Gold for Oil” programme.
COPEC appeals to transport operators to hold on to increase in transport fares
Meanwhile, the Chamber of Petroleum Consumers (COPEC) has appealed to transport owners to hold on with moves to push for an increase in transport fares as fuel prices go up.
The Ghana Road Transport Union (GPRTU) had earlier stated that it will demand for an increase in transport fares if prices of petroleum products continue to increase at the pumps.
But reacting to the issue, the Executive Secretary of COPEC, Duncan Amoah said the transport owners may have to wait until the end of the first quarter of the year before demanding for increase in fares.
“We think it is too early to start demanding for an upward review of fuel prices. At least we must wait and monitor the trend until March”, Mr. Amoah said.
Robert Ayariga, the Assemblyman for the Vea Electoral Area in the Bongo District of the Upper East Region, is unhappy that dry season farmers in the area are losing their crops because of the Irrigation Company of Upper Region’s (ICOUR) decision to shut down water supply from the Vea Irrigation Dam.
Mr. Ayariga made these allegations when he spoke on A1 Radio’s Day Break Upper East Show today, February 1, 2023.
The decision to disrupt water supply from the dam, according to Mr. Ayariga was to help prepare the area ahead of the rehabilitation of the dam. The decision, however, is causing untold hardship for the farmers.
“Recently, I called the ICOUR manager to find out what is happening, and what he told me was that they would no longer give the farmers water, [explaining that] the contractor reached him and [said he, the contractor] was coming. So they’ve stopped giving us the water. For about 2 weeks now, our crops have been dying. We are no longer getting the water to the farms, and the contractor is also not on site, so we do not know what is happening,” he said.
The rehabilitation was expected to be completed in 30 months.
Details of the contract work included the restoration of the eroded downstream slope of the dam embankment to improve the dam’s stability, rehabilitation of the irrigation canal network, drainage work, construction of farm roads, and perimeter fencing of the irrigable area.
At a ceremony to officially hand over the site, the Regional Minister called for quality work from the Contractor within the scheduled time frame to enable farmers in the area to continue with their farming activities.
But 10 months after the site was handed over, the contractor is yet to move to the site, and the project is yet to begin.
When asked about the reasons for the delay, Mr. Yakubu explained that the delays were associated with the source of funding for the project.
“Initially, the Ministry was trying to rehabilitate it [the Vea Dam] themselves, but now, the World Bank has agreed to actually give us money to do it and that is what is delaying. We are actually working out the modalities and everything to even have more money to do it better. That is what is delaying the project,” he said.
Mr. Yakubu insisted that the government had not abandoned the project.
Meanwhile, work is ongoing to create proper channels and waterways around the Tamne Dam in the Garu District for irrigation, Mr. Yakubu said.
