MTN Areeba pledges Support for festivals and cultures in northern Ghana

Mr. George Andah, Chief Marketing Officer of MTN (formerly Areeba), said on Saturday that the company would support traditional authorities in the north to celebrate their festivals and also help them to preserve their culture. He said this would become fully accomplished when MTN Foundation was launched in the country before the end of the year to focus on education, health, economic empowerment and arts and culture especially in the northern sector.

Mr. Andah said this in Tamale when he paid a courtesy call on the regent of Tamale, Alhaji Abdulai Ziblim, and added that Areeba supported vocational education in the Northern Region and would build on it for further improvement. Mr. Andah said MTN, sponsors of CAN 2008, would collaborate with the Tamale Metropolitan Assembly and traditional authorities to ensure that Tamale hosted the event successfully. Areas of collaboration would include decoration of roads from the Tamale Airport to the games venue, some major roads and roundabouts to ensure that visitors and investors appreciated the beauty of Tamale and the country.

Alhaji Ziblim commended MTN for the projects and pledged his full support to their activities in the region. He said Tamale was now a haven of investment and that MTN's presence in the region would encourage other investors to focus attention on the Northern Region. Mr. Andah earlier presented a cheque for 41.1 million cedis to the Northern Regional Coordinating Council as MTN's contribution to the Tamale Disaster Fund.GNA

Otumfuo sets up committee to facilitate cocoa processing factory in Ashanti

Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, Asantehene, has set up a committee to select a suitable piece of land for the establishment of a cocoa-processing factory in the Ashanti Region within the next six months. This followed the conclusion of an 18-month feasibility study by the ADM Cocoa International that had expressed interest in setting up the factory in the region at a meeting with Otumfuo Osei Tutu.

This was contained in a statement issued in Kumasi and signed by Mr G.B. Osei-Antwi, Media Relations Manager for Manhyia Palace. Oheneba Atwereboanda II, Hiahene, heads the committee. Otumfuo Osei Tutu charged the committee that has officials of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly and the ADM Cocoa International as its members to work with dispatch and submit a report to him within two weeks.GNA

Fire devastate Tema ECG panel

Technical personnel of the Electricity Corporation of Ghana (ECG) Tema, on Saturday afternoon acted promptly to put out fire that had swept through one of its equipment at the Community one substation to save a national disaster.

Within 30 minutes the men led by the Regional Engineer, Mr. Delali Oklu brought the fire in one of its panels at the material division of the ECG opposite the old Ghana Textile Manufacturing Company under control.

The incident has placed part of the city in total darkness but Mr Oklu assured the public that power would be restored after the situation had been rectified soon. Mr Oklu could not tell the cause of the fire, saying they were still investigating. When Ghana News Agency arrived at the scene ECG personnel were still working on the burnt panel.

Their equipment, together with others in other sub-stations in the municipality were recently installed by the Tema Office of ECG from its own internally generated funds, costing millions of cedis. Meanwhile the early morning rains caused havoc in part of the communities in Tema. Many roads at Community 12 got flooded, making it unmotorable some residence near Good News Mission were flooded. The situation was not different at Community five as the frontage of some houses got flooded whiles pools of water had collected in the middle of the road, making driving uncomfortable.GNAREA

Veep commends health workers for promoting health delivery

The Vice President, Alhaji Mahama on Saturday commended the efforts health workers are making towards the promotion of quality health care delivery in the country. He said the contributions of health workers and other service providers were supplementing the government efforts at addressing the welfare needs of Ghanaians.

The Vice President was addressing the management, nurses and staff of the Obuasi Government Hospital as part of his working visit to the Obuasi municipality. The Vice President had earlier inspected a 1.5 billion cedis, 25-bed children's ward being built by the Municipal Assembly for the hospital. Messrs George Senefo-Antwi, the Project Manager and Patrick Thompson, Project Engineer of the Mining and Building Contractors (MBC), the contractor of the project told the Vice President that the project was about 80 per cent complete. Alhaji Mahama commended the management, nurses and staff of the hospital for their contribution towards the health care delivery of the people in the municipality.

"Let us all see how we can bring quality health care to our people", he said. He gave the assurance that the Kufuor administration was doing everything possible to ensure that health workers were motivated to enable them to carry out their good works to the nation. The Vice-President was hopeful that the children's ward was going to add value to the operations of the hospital and further help to improve health care delivery services at the municipality. Alhaji Mahama called on all Ghanaians to embrace the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) since it was the easy way to access affordable health care.

The Vice President said as part of the government's efforts to create jobs for the country's unemployed youth and also support the expansion of the health sector, health extension workers had been engaged under the National Youth Employment Programme (NYEP) and called on the nurses to give them the maximum encouragement and support in their duties.GNA