There was no Unit Committee election at some polling stations in Savelugu when the District level elections took off on Tuesday morning as people did not register to contest.
A former Unit Committee member who did not disclose his name told the GNA that during the last Unit Committee election, those elected were not inaugurated to allow them to carry out their mandate.
This, he said, made them non-functional in the communities, as the people who elected them did not recognise their authority.
These among other factors, he explained, had discouraged the people from registering to contest this year's Unit Committee election.
Turn out at the District Assembly Election was encouraging in the morning but there was a lull in late afternoon.
Some of the Presiding Officers attributed the situation to the fact that it was harvesting time and the Ramadan, as well as inadequate publicity on the elections.
Some voters also told the GNA that they did not attach importance to the District level elections because they had not impacted positively on their lives.
At the Yoo Roman Catholic Primary School Polling Station, 165 out of 658 registered voters had cast their votes as at midday while at the Adabiya English Arabic Primary School, out of the 778 registered voters only 193 had voted.
Two hundred and thirty-two out of the 698 registered voters had exercised their franchise at Alhaji Iddris Bila's House Polling Station as at 12:05 P.M. while 260 voters out of the 729 registered voters had cast their votes at the Canteen Polling Station, by 12:20 P.M.
At 12:30 P.M., 224 voters had cast their ballot at the Savelugu Junior Secondary School Polling Station out of the 670 registered voters.
News from Ghana,the African Sub-Region and More!
25.9.06
Senegal ruled out on Monday mass deportations of its nationals currently living illegally in France following a pact signed between the two countries requiring clandestine immigrants to be repatriated."There will be no charter (fli2ghts) for clandestine migrants. The return of migrants to their countries of origin will be organised jointly by the two countries," Senegalese Interior Minister Ousmane Ngom told a news conference.Ngom and his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, signed the accord at the weekend making it easier for Senegalese students and entrepreneurs to enter France and for Paris to repatriate illegal immigrants.Sarkozy described the accord as "historic and without precedent".Ngom was reacting to newspaper reports here criticising the weekend deal as opening flood-gates of deportation charter flights from Paris to Dakar.
Liberian Police Officers in Ghana for training
Thirty Liberian Police Officers arrived in Accra on Monday to undergo a three-week training course at the Ghana Police College in Accra. Deputy Superintendent of Police, Mr Paul Kissi Frimpong, a Ghanaian Police Officer working with the United Nations Police Force in Liberia led the group to Ghana. Mr Frimpong, who is the Deputy Senior Advisor on Law Enforcement, Reform and Restructuring in Liberia, said the training would add a professional touch to policing in the war ravaged country. He said over the years policing in Liberia was politicized to the extent that non-professionals were given charge of the Service paving way for certain lapses unacceptable to the practice of the profession. He said the Ghana Police under the United Nations had so far trained more than 2,000 Police personnel with more training programmes in the pipeline. He said that the 30 officers have undergone a nine months basic training in the Liberia Police Academy. Welcoming the Officers to Ghana at the Kotoka International Airport, Deputy Superintendent of Police, Kwesi Ofori of the Police Public Relations Directorate, said the Service was determined to ensure the maintenance of regional security by sharing its knowledge with similar agencies in the Sub Region.
GES Declares holiday for Assembly Elections
The Ghana Education Service (GES) has declared Tuesday, September 26 a holiday for all basic schools throughout the country.A statement issued to the Ghana News Agency in Accra, and signed by Mr Michael Kenneth Nsowah, Acting Director-General of the GES, asked all heads of basic schools to observe the day as such due to the District Assembly Elections scheduled for the day.
A four-member delegation of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) led by the General-Secretary, Mr Johnson Aseidu Nketiah is in the United Kingdom (UK) to attend the Labour Party Annual Conference 2006 in Manchester.A statement in Accra on Monday by Mr Fifi Kwetey, National Propaganda Secretary, said the trip was at the invitation of the British Labour Party. The delegation includes Mrs Ama Benyiwa-Doe, National Women Organiser; Mr Baba Jamal Ahmed, Deputy General Secretary and Mr Kofi Attor, Director of International Relations. They would be away for nine days. The statement said in their absence, Mr Elvis Afriyie-Ankrah, Deputy General Secretary (Operations), would act as General Secretary.
13.9.06
President John Agyekum Kufuor leaves Accra on Tuesday for Cuba, Havana, to attend the 14th Summit of the Heads of State of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM).
The Summit, scheduled for September 11 to September 16, is expected to focus the minds of member countries on enhancing the role of the NAM in the prevailing international system.
A statement signed by Mr Andrew Awuni, Press Secretary to the President and Presidential Spokesman, said the Summit would review the international situation, examine NAM's own roles and methods of work and follow up on the outcomes of major UN Summits and conferences as well as the Millennium Declaration.
"The Heads of State are expected to reaffirm and underscore the Movement's abiding faith and commitment to its founding principles, ideals and purposes, particularly in establishing a peaceful and prosperous world as well as a just and equitable world order." The statement said President Kufuor would continue to the US to attend the 61st General Assembly of the UN, which would among other things, consider the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the US against Cuba.
It said the Assembly would also consider the UN Secretary-General's report on the situation in the Middle East, the question of Palestine, the UN Security Council reforms, disarmament and international security, among otherthings.
The President is expected back home on September 25.
14th NAM Summit kicks off in Cuba
A meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) begins on Monday amid uncertainty about the role Cuba's ailing leader Fidel Castro will play, if any, in hosting leaders of developing countries from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
Representatives of most of the 116 members of the Non-Aligned Movement are expected at the meeting in Havana, which culminates on Friday and Saturday in a summit of more than 50 heads of state and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Among the well-known leaders attending are Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh of India and Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand as well as Presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, and Bashar Assad of Syria.
The Summit, scheduled for September 11 to September 16, is expected to focus the minds of member countries on enhancing the role of the NAM in the prevailing international system.
A statement signed by Mr Andrew Awuni, Press Secretary to the President and Presidential Spokesman, said the Summit would review the international situation, examine NAM's own roles and methods of work and follow up on the outcomes of major UN Summits and conferences as well as the Millennium Declaration.
"The Heads of State are expected to reaffirm and underscore the Movement's abiding faith and commitment to its founding principles, ideals and purposes, particularly in establishing a peaceful and prosperous world as well as a just and equitable world order." The statement said President Kufuor would continue to the US to attend the 61st General Assembly of the UN, which would among other things, consider the economic, commercial and financial embargo imposed by the US against Cuba.
It said the Assembly would also consider the UN Secretary-General's report on the situation in the Middle East, the question of Palestine, the UN Security Council reforms, disarmament and international security, among otherthings.
The President is expected back home on September 25.
14th NAM Summit kicks off in Cuba
A meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) begins on Monday amid uncertainty about the role Cuba's ailing leader Fidel Castro will play, if any, in hosting leaders of developing countries from Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America.
Representatives of most of the 116 members of the Non-Aligned Movement are expected at the meeting in Havana, which culminates on Friday and Saturday in a summit of more than 50 heads of state and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Among the well-known leaders attending are Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh of India and Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand as well as Presidents Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, and Bashar Assad of Syria.
12.9.06
A Professor of Sociology at the Rhodes University, Grahamstown, South Africa, on Monday said the achievements of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) must not be dependent on aid.
Speaking at a pre-conference workshop dialogue of the 10th edition of the Highway Africa Conference, Professor Jimi Adesina, said aid assistance in development goals always gave false account of efforts made by countries.
"No country can develop on the basis of aid," he said, and urged African countries to develop their own agenda with their own resources for programmes at their own pace.
Highway Africa is the largest annual gathering of African journalists to interact and discuss the uses, access and application of ICT tools for development, good governance and democracy. About 500 journalists are attending this year's conference on the theme: "Celebrations, Reflections and Future Directions." Prof. Adesina, who was speaking on: "Setting the Context: MDGs and Implications for Journalism and Media in Africa", said the original objectives of the MDGs by the United Nations General Assembly contained over 28 paragraphs, which, among other things, sought to cancel debts of developing countries and to help maintain peace in war-torn countries. However, the state of global power relations, especially between the UN and the Breton Wood institutions, had resulted in reducing the goals to only eight points.
Prof. Adesina observed that the UN made the effort to intervene because it realised that after more than 20 years of specific macroeconomic policies, such as the structural adjustment programme, poverty had rather deepened.
The only things it achieved, he said, were some aspects of stabilisation in some economies, establishment of shopping malls and financing of the middle class, who at the time had little education but strived to be considered petty bourgeois class with proletarian aspirations across the Continent.
"What happened in the 1980s as a result of the implementation of these policies can therefore be described as a fundamental change of aspirations of the middle class."
But at the same time, over 126 million people fell below the poverty line in the over 20 years of structural adjustment with education and public health care plunging into a mess while macroeconomic imbalance became endemic.
Prof. Adesina said resorting to aid flows for the financing of government budgets also had its implications of recording continued deficits in countries such as Ghana and Uganda.
The Professor said the latest attempts at halving poverty by 2015 was, therefore, nowhere near being achieved because earning a dollar a day was nothing to write home about. "Instead, we can say that the target should be for the destitute." He said for countries, which opted for the highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative; "by the time they go through the whole process to reach the exit point, they may have sold their countries out to foreigners". This, he said, was because such countries were pushed into opening up their economies to private capital. Prof. Adesina said there had been some improvements but at the time when Africa should be moving ahead, the Continent's new priority was focused on primary and basic education, which was not enough qualification for development.
The Professor cited Ghana as an example of such countries, which after almost 50 years of independence had to focus attention on basic education instead of building capacities.
He also said that the Continent had become "consumers of what we do not produce and producers of what we do not consume.
"We should ask ourselves why we could not achieve health for all, water for all and education for all by the year 2000."
Prof. Adesina said going by current assessments, Africa should have achieved about 40 per cent of the MDGs targets by now. Instead, available figures indicated achievements of between six per cent to 20 per cent in various indices including child mortality; education; maternal health; environment and improvements in HIV/AIDS and malaria. He cited Tanzania as an example of an African country that had achieved a lot with all sections of the public feeling a sense of belonging despite the multiplicity of ethnic grouping.
He said to move in the right direction countries must have strategic objectives to follow.Source:
GNA
Speaking at a pre-conference workshop dialogue of the 10th edition of the Highway Africa Conference, Professor Jimi Adesina, said aid assistance in development goals always gave false account of efforts made by countries.
"No country can develop on the basis of aid," he said, and urged African countries to develop their own agenda with their own resources for programmes at their own pace.
Highway Africa is the largest annual gathering of African journalists to interact and discuss the uses, access and application of ICT tools for development, good governance and democracy. About 500 journalists are attending this year's conference on the theme: "Celebrations, Reflections and Future Directions." Prof. Adesina, who was speaking on: "Setting the Context: MDGs and Implications for Journalism and Media in Africa", said the original objectives of the MDGs by the United Nations General Assembly contained over 28 paragraphs, which, among other things, sought to cancel debts of developing countries and to help maintain peace in war-torn countries. However, the state of global power relations, especially between the UN and the Breton Wood institutions, had resulted in reducing the goals to only eight points.
Prof. Adesina observed that the UN made the effort to intervene because it realised that after more than 20 years of specific macroeconomic policies, such as the structural adjustment programme, poverty had rather deepened.
The only things it achieved, he said, were some aspects of stabilisation in some economies, establishment of shopping malls and financing of the middle class, who at the time had little education but strived to be considered petty bourgeois class with proletarian aspirations across the Continent.
"What happened in the 1980s as a result of the implementation of these policies can therefore be described as a fundamental change of aspirations of the middle class."
But at the same time, over 126 million people fell below the poverty line in the over 20 years of structural adjustment with education and public health care plunging into a mess while macroeconomic imbalance became endemic.
Prof. Adesina said resorting to aid flows for the financing of government budgets also had its implications of recording continued deficits in countries such as Ghana and Uganda.
The Professor said the latest attempts at halving poverty by 2015 was, therefore, nowhere near being achieved because earning a dollar a day was nothing to write home about. "Instead, we can say that the target should be for the destitute." He said for countries, which opted for the highly Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative; "by the time they go through the whole process to reach the exit point, they may have sold their countries out to foreigners". This, he said, was because such countries were pushed into opening up their economies to private capital. Prof. Adesina said there had been some improvements but at the time when Africa should be moving ahead, the Continent's new priority was focused on primary and basic education, which was not enough qualification for development.
The Professor cited Ghana as an example of such countries, which after almost 50 years of independence had to focus attention on basic education instead of building capacities.
He also said that the Continent had become "consumers of what we do not produce and producers of what we do not consume.
"We should ask ourselves why we could not achieve health for all, water for all and education for all by the year 2000."
Prof. Adesina said going by current assessments, Africa should have achieved about 40 per cent of the MDGs targets by now. Instead, available figures indicated achievements of between six per cent to 20 per cent in various indices including child mortality; education; maternal health; environment and improvements in HIV/AIDS and malaria. He cited Tanzania as an example of an African country that had achieved a lot with all sections of the public feeling a sense of belonging despite the multiplicity of ethnic grouping.
He said to move in the right direction countries must have strategic objectives to follow.Source:
GNA
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