The Ministry of Communication would next Friday sign a 40 million-dollar loan agreement with the World Bank to support Ghana's Electronic Governance Project.

Professor Mike Ocquaye, Sector Minister, said the project would among other things facilitate administrative work in all sectors of the economy and would promote distant education. Prof. Ocquaye said this in Accra when he presented six million cedis and eight bottles of schnapps to the Osu Traditional Council in Accra to mark the Homowo Festival.

The Minister, who is also a native of Osu, said the festival should serve as an occasion to reconcile, take stock of the past and forge ahead. He said unity should be their priority during this festive occasion and they should use the season to promote peace and honesty that Osu was noted for.

Nii Adu Mante, Member of Parliament for Klottey Korle, who also presented two bottles of schnapps and 4.5 million cedis to the Council, advised them to continue to uphold the values and principles for which Homowo was instituted.

Nii Ako Norkei IV, Manklalo and President of the Osu Traditional Council, called for unity among heads of the various clans to accelerate development in the community.

He commended the Minster and Member of Parliament for their donations and pledged the Council's support to assist the Ministry to establish an ICT facility in the area.

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) would retain power in the 2008 Presidential and Parliamentary elections to continue the sound macroeconomic policies, rule of law and good governance of the government.

Mr Lord Commey, National Organiser of the NPP, stated this to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview after interacting with Polling Station Chairmen and Constituency Executives at Gomoa Ankamu as part of his tour of the Central Region.

He said the tour of the region afforded him the opportunity to meet District Chief Executives (DCEs), MPs and Constituency Chairmen to iron out teething problems within the party.

The tour took him to Agona, Gomoa, Awutu-Senya-Effutu and Asikuma-Odoben-Brakwa and other Districts.

Mr Commey said 32 members in the Effutu constituency who were dismissed had been pardoned while controversy over 23 polling stations elections had been resolved with directives to the Regional Organiser to fix fresh dates for elections.

He pointed out that the anomalies were due to a break in communication and misunderstanding between some executives and Polling Station Chairmen. Mr Commey stated that Article 4 of the NPP constitution would be invoked to resolve all internal matters to ensure peace and stability and called on the rank and file to bury their differences to ensure victory in 2008.

Mr Joe Donkoh, Chairman of the Constituency, called for better relations between him, the MP and executive members and appealed for calm and unity to promote effective party organisation and commended the national executives for their steps to resolve the squabbles.

The DCE Ms Joyce Aidoo observed that the constituency would suffer without unity and praised the National Organiser for his initiative.

Dr Benjamin Kumbuor, Ranking Member of Parliament for Defence and Security on Friday, called for care in attempts to criminalize the manufacture of small arms and light weapons.

He said alternative sources of livelihood such as the manufacturing of farm and industrial implements could be considered since the absence of such alternatives would only drive the manufacture of guns underground with dire consequences.

Dr Kumbuor made call in a panel discussion on "the role of the ECOWAS Parliament on Implementing the ECOWAS Convention on Small Arms and Light Weapons" at the end of two day sub regional workshop in Accra.

Dr Kunbour said Ghana was noted in the sub-region for the manufacture of small arms and light weapons as a vocation and a means of livelihood, adding that conservative official figures show that between January and June 2005, the Police seized a total number of 1,420 locally manufactured guns.

He noted the problem of accurate statistical information on small arms and light weapons, and said that much as the Ghana Armed Forces had a relatively good stockpile and inventory management procedures for its weapons, the same could not be said of the Police Service, particularly in the rural areas.

Also, there are yet Forest Guards and officials of the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service who could not be said to have efficient armouries throughout the country, he said.

Dr Kumbuor called for legislation and clear policy on stockpiles of small arms and light weapons and their usage in traditional institutions and as part of stool and other regalia had been one neglected.

"I must add that it is a sensitive area that requires tactful negotiations. Do remember that in some communities in Ghana, the measure of adulthood is the possession of a gun," the Ranking Member said.

He suggested to Members of the ECOWAS Parliament to make specific recommendations on the budget line for the National Parliament and similarly adapt ECOWAS Guidelines on the National Programmes of Action to assist their Parliaments to implement the ECOWAS convention on small arms.

Mr. Prosper Bani, Regional Advisor on Small Arms at the office of the United Nations Development Programme in Senegal, said the misuse of weapons brought in its wake health and education concerns as people were maimed or killed and made orphans.

He called for an increased awareness on the issues brought into the forefront in the Convention on Small Arms, and a consideration of how development impacted on national security.

Dr Cyriaque Pawoumotom Agnekethom, Head of the ECOWAS Small Arms Unit announced that the Executive Secretary of ECOWAS would visit the Parliaments in the sub-region to present the Convention to them.

The workshop recommended information sharing among the member states of the ECOWAS, and the establishment of national plans of action for the effective implementation of the Convention.

Delegates from the ECOWAS Parliament from Ghana, Liberia, Mali and Senegal serving on the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Security, Environment and Natural Resources Committees attended the workshop.

The workshop is being organised by the Foundation for Security and Development in Africa (FOSDA), a civil society group, in collaboration with the Open Society Initiative for West Africa and the UNDP.

Among the issues discussed were the role and responsibilities of the ECOWAS Parliament in ensuring that trans-border crimes were curbed, the creation of the environment to promote sub-regional co-operation and harmonization of legislations.

An American volunteer group from the Lansing Community Medical College in Michigan in the United States of America has donated 12 laptop computers to a people of Ankaase, a farming community in the Kwabre District of Ashanti.

The group made up of professors, lecturers and students, has as part of an eight-day visit to the community, paid the health insurance premiums of 36.9 million cedis covering 286 people.

Making the presentation at a ceremony at Ankaase, Professor Leslie Hoover, leader of the group, said the computers formed part of an 185 million-cedi assistance package for the community and that 10 of the computers is for the community library, one for the Methodist Hospital and the remaining for Christ Ambassadors, a youth group in the town.

The volunteer group also donated a quantity of jerseys and other sports equipment to the three basic schools in the community.

Alhaji Akwasi Yeboah, District Chief Executive for Kwabre, who received the items, commended the group for the gesture, which he said came at the right time, when the community library project was nearing completion.

The DCE pledged to assist in the completion of the library project and called on the people to send their children to school to enable them benefit from the government's fee-free education.

Ghana through its Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) programme is to generate over two million jobs within the next couple of years, President John Agyekum Kufuor announced on Wednesday in Accra when he launched the national programme at Abeka Lapaz, Accra.

He said that fitted perfectly into the Government's vision of creating wealth to reduce poverty. President Kufuor gave the assurance that the Government would retain an oversight role to ensure that the resources coming in were transparently and efficiently deployed to the benefit of farmers and the entire economy.

Vice President Alhaji Aliu Mahama; Mr Freddie Blay, First Deputy Speaker of Parliament; Ms Pamela Bridgewater, the United States (US) Ambassador; Ministers of State, Members of Parliament (MPs) and traditional rulers were among the assembled mass that witnessed the ceremony. Ghana's MCA Compact was signed on August 1, thus paving way for the country to be eligible to access US development support of 547 million dollars.

This amount represents more than a quarter of the 2.1 billion dollars the US Government has made available for sharing among the total of nine countries selected for the MCA fund.

The Account is the US Government's reward to countries that rule justly, invest in their peoples and fight poverty.

Pressident Kufuor outlined some of the activities that would be undertaken with the funds, saying, it would be used among other things to assist farmers with high-yielding planting materials; credit; machinery; irrigation facilities and training in modern farm practices to increase their productivity,

Besides, businesses would be supported to invest in storage and marketing, transportation, value addition and agro-industrialization. Part of it would also go into the construction of a 14-kilometre six-lane dual carriageway from Mallam Junction to join the Tema Motorway for quicker transportation of exports especially farm produce to the ports.

President Kufuor said a network of feeder roads and trunk roads would also be improved all over the 23 Compact Districts to link farm gates to the markets and ports, adding that in the Afram Plains for example, apart from the roads, a new ferry would be introduced to link Adawso with Ekye-Amanfrom over the Volta River.

"All of us must, therefore, support these projects fully. The beneficiary farmers, contractors, traders, workers and community leaders must show exemplary commitment to the success of the projects. “They must show that they are the lucky ones that the entire nation has selected to lead the transformation that will lift the national population from poverty to the life of dignity and prosperity."

President Kufuor called on all the people irrespective of region, district, political party, ethnic group or religion, wherever they were, to be proud of themselves as Ghanaians "Today, the entire nation has cause to be proud that our collective, ongoing commitment to national reconstruction and good governance has received global endorsement."

He said the country should also appreciate the friendly and humanitarian gesture that the US Government led by President George W. Bush was showing to Ghana through these projects.

Dr Paa Kwesi Nduom, Minister of Public Sector Reform and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Millennium Development Authority, pledged that they would work as patriots to implement the MCA Ghana Programme in a transparent, diligent and timely manner so that the country would get the intended benefits.

"Our aim is to invest most of the money in less than five years and do it so well enough to be able to go back to the Millennium Challenge Corporation for more money."

He announced that they had already started with the implementation of the programme, saying, 12 out of 15 pineapple nucleus farmers contacted last week, have signed up to participate in a demonstration programme that would involve between 400 and 500 out-growers or small-scale farmers.

Dr Nduom said by the end of December, 2006, at least five large-scale nucleus farmers would be assisted to get cooling facilities on their farms.