WiLDAF GHANA MOURNS PRESIDENT MILLS

Women in Law and Development in Africa, WiLDAF Ghana has learnt with heavy heart, the sudden death of His Excellency Prof. John Atta Mills.
 

WiLDAF Ghana wishes to express the heartfelt condolences of its Network members, Board and Staff to his wife, Dr. Ernestina Naadu Mills and family, the National Democratic Congress and the entire Nation.
 

As we mourn our Late President, we call on all Ghanaians to stand united and be circumspect in this moment of great loss and pain to protect our peace and democracy. We also urge all and sundry to support His Excellency John Dramani Mahama as he takes up the mantle of leadership.
 

The swift swearing-in of the Vice President, H.E. John Dramani Mahama as the new President demonstrates Ghana’s growing democracy.
 

May the soul of the Late President rest in peace, God bless our Home land Ghana, and continue to make us great and strong.
 

WiLDAF Ghana is a pan African non-governmental women’s rights organization committed to the promotion and protection of women and children’s rights.

Secretary Clinton Pays Tribute to President Mills

On behalf of the people of the United States, I want to send my deepest sympathies to the people of Ghana and the friends, family, and loved ones of President John Evans Atta Mills. President Mills made a significant contribution to Ghana’s democracy and development, and forged a strong and positive partnership with the United States. As the third president of modern Ghana, he worked to strengthen his country’s democratic institutions and to expand prosperity for all of its people. He promoted regional peace and reinforced Ghana’s reputation as a leader in Africa. President Mills was a champion for his nation and his loss will be felt around the world. My thoughts and prayers are with all the people of Ghana during this difficult time.

Toyota Ghana tops 2009 edition of Ghana Club 100

Toyota Ghana Company Limited (TGCL), a leading automobile dealer, has been adjudged the overall best company for the 2009 Edition of the Ghana Club 100 Awards in Accra on Tuesday. Nine other companies that made it to the best 10 category include Auto Plaza Limited, Stanbic Bank Ghana Limited, Ecobank Ghana Limited, UT Financial Services and Dan Adams Pharmaceuticals Limited. The rest were The Trust Bank Ghana Limited, Scancom Limited, All-Ship Logistics and Amalgamated Bank Ghana Limited.

"The Ghana Club 100 Awards" instituted in 1998, is an annual event to celebrate the top one hundred (100) companies in various sectors of the country's economy.

The Ghana Investment Promotion Center (GIPC) organised the event on the theme: "Enhancing Partnerships between Domestic and Foreign Investors for Sustained Economic Development". This year's awards, which were ranked, based on three factors of the competing companies, such as size, return on equity and growth was unique because rural banks put up a strong showing, sweeping a substantial amount of the awards.

Mr Takahiko Takabayashi, Managing Director of TGCL received the award on behalf of the company and promised to continue to do more to ensure customer satisfaction, which he said, is a core objective of the company. Ms Hanna Tetteh, Minister of Trade and Industry urged companies to continue to focus on what they do and even do it better to enable them to grow. Ms Tetteh said government was aware of the problems confronting the business environment assuring that it would continue to implement reforms to improve the sector. She appealed to the private sector to embrace and sustain the Ghana Club 100 Awards, calling on members to impress on other private firms to join it.

She also congratulated the GIPC for maintaining the momentum in the annual event. Mr Ishmael Yamson, Board Chairman of the GIPC observed that Ghana was experiencing interesting times; oil discovery and its attendant benefits among others, adding that the revenue from the sector should be used to create jobs

Mr Yamson called on the award winners to fashion out measures to ensure that they continued to be amongst winners in subsequent years. Mr George Aboagye, Chief Executive Officer of GIPC congratulated all companies that have participated in the event since its inception in 1998.

Mr Aboagye reiterated the importance of the private sector to the country's economic growth and realization of the government's Better Ghana Agenda, adding GIPC would continue to facilitate its improvement. He announced that GIPC would hold interactive meetings with corporate organizations on their perceptions about the awards and how to improve upon it.
Source: GNA

Training programme for Police personnel begins

A three-day training programme for 45 police personnel on international policing, marine law, human rights and how to combat criminal syndicates in the oil find zone opened at Takoradi on Tuesday.

Opening the training programme, Alhaji Hamidu Mahama, Western Regional Police Commander, said the programme was the first in a series being organized by the Regional Police to equip policemen to handle criminals when the drilling of the country's oil begins in the last quarter of the year. He said majority of policemen in the region would benefit from the training programme.

Alhaji Mahama, who is a Deputy Commissioner of Police, said those, who would be trained would form the nucleus of a special taskforce to patrol the oilfields with the Ghana Navy and other security agencies. He said the taskforce would be adequately equipped with the necessary logistics and equipment to ensure effective and efficient policing. The Regional Command would also establish police stations at Half Assini and Aiyinase to provide maximum security to oil installations and the entire citizenry. Alhaji Mahama said the Regional Police Command was gearing up to deal ruthlessly and swiftly with miscreants that might disturb the peace and harmony in the region.

He said in this regard, the Regional Police Command was re-strategizing, upgrading and equipping police personnel to meet international standard of policing.
Source : GNA

MTN's George Andah moves to Bharti Airtel (Zain)

Mr George Andah, the multi-award winning Chief Marketing Officer for Ghana's leading telecoms operator, MTN (Ghana), is moving to Bharti Airtel, owners of Zain Telecommunications Limited.

George Andah who was formally at Guinness Ghana Breweries Limited was last year awarded Marketing Man of the Year, along several other awards he has picked up for his marketing acumen.

He has also been credited as having played crucial roles in MTN Ghana's growth and huge success as a market leader in Ghana.

His move could be part of Bharti Airtel’s plan to capture the Ghanaian Market and also make it a leading brand as he has done with MTN and Guinness Ghana Limited.

Andah attained his first degree in Bsc Biochemistry at the Kwame Nkrumah Science and Technology..

He is also an old Student of Achimota College.


Source: Joy News

Transition Bill is to end acrimony - IDEG

Dr Emmanuel Akwetey, Executive Director of Institute for Democratic Governance (IDEG), has said the Presidential Transitional Bill was to end acrimony that had characterised transitions.

"Transition is not about handing over presidential baton from an out-going regime to an in-coming regime; it has a broader and greater impact on socio-economic progress of the nation and generates uncertainty among District Chief Executives, government appointees in the assemblies.

"Insecurity of heads of boards and institutions creates loss of managerial time, anxiety among public and civil servants.the list is endless, the disjointed way of handling Transition in the Fourth Republic is destructive. The Transition Bill is an attempt to deal with the problem...," Dr Akwetey said.

Dr Akwetey was speaking at Akosombo at the weekend at the project launch and methodology workshop on the UNDP 2010 National Human Development Report (NHDR) for researchers, media practitioners, political economists, security experts and gender advocates. The report on the general theme: "Democratic Political Transition and Human Development," focuses on seven main thematic clusters. These state machinery, governance institutions and security establishment, the economy, social development and national cohesion, public and private corporate sector, general human development and theoretical and analytical framework.

The Presidential Transition Bill 2008 was launched by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Ghana Political Parties Programme (GPPP) to end polarisation and acrimony that has greeted transition in the Fourth Republic.

The Bill is aims to make smooth transition from one government to the other and institutionalising a multi-partisan framework and ground rules and regulations to govern and guide transitions. Dr Akwetey said transitions should be viewed in a broader perspective affecting the social life of all Ghanaians irrespective of political persuasion.

He said the lack of a governance political transitional structure had over the years contributed to the increasing rate of corruption among public officials.

Speaking on the 2010 UNDP Report, Dr Kamil Kamaluddeen, UNDP Country Director, said the 20th anniversary edition of the HDR would examine decades of HD data trends, refine the original HD Index with new databases and methodologies and introduce new measures adjusting the Index to reflect gender disparities and other internal national inequalities.

He said the 2010 HDR also featured the multidimensional poverty index (MPI), which was developed by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) with UNDP support. This new index is designed to provide a fuller and more accurate picture of acute poverty on the household level than traditional "dollar-a-day" formulas. Dr Kamaluddeen said since 1990 the HDR had published the human development index (HDI) which looked beyond GDP to a broader definition of well-being.

He said the HDI provided a composite measure of three dimensions of human development: living a long and healthy life (measured by life expectancy), being educated (measured by adult literacy and gross enrolment in education) and having a decent standard of living (measured by purchasing power parity (PPP) income). Dr Kamaluddeen said HDI also provided a broadened prism for viewing human progress and the complex relationship between income and well-being.

The report would seek to give a coherent and cogent expression to concerns about the impact of democratic political transition on contemporary human development programmes and bring to the fore the need for radical changes for institutionalization of structures to handle the problem adequately.

Source: GNA

International Literacy Day celebrations commemorated with a National symposium and exhibition

The 2010 International Literacy Day Celebration has being commemorated with a Grand National Symposium and Exhibition. The program which was put together by the Non-Formal Education Division (NFED) of the Ministry of Education brought together key stakeholders such as Prof. Yaw Oheneba-Sakyi, Director, Institute of Continuing Education and Distance Learning, University of Ghana, Rev. Dr. Fred Deegbe, General Secretary, Christian Council of Ghana and Mrs. Gifty Baka, a Program Manager of Action Aid, Ghana who presented papers on the theme of the celebration “Functional Literacy – A Key to Job Creation and Poverty Reduction” and gave a profound insight into what Functional Literacy can do to create jobs and reduce poverty.

Speaking at the symposium in Accra last week, the Minister of Education Alex Tettey-Enyo said his ministry Ministry will support the establishment of a computer literacy and ICT Centers in the districts for the training of graduates of the NFLP as part of its post-literacy Program in order to open up job opportunities for the productive youth and especially women and girls seeking ways of creating wealth to improve their socio-economic conditions. This is in view of the fact that computer literacy itself provides thousands of job opportunities and is also a caveat for poverty reduction. “This era of information technology, literacy has gone beyond reading, writing and numeracy to include the use of ICT to identify sources of information in the global information super highway, the internet”.

“Am happy that plans are far advanced for the commencement of the NFED Vocational English Literacy Project in dress making and hairdressing which is expected to provide a building bridge for the professional development of learners in their requisite trades. If it proves successful, which I know it will, more trades such as masonry, carpentry, auto mechanics, joinery will be added” he said.

Mr. Tettey-Enyo said “it was virtually impossible for them to confidently lead the crusade to sweep illiteracy out of dear country and wish to confidently affirm that m, in order to construct a smooth road for our socio-economic development, it is imperative for all and sundry to put our shoulders to the wheel to ensure that the burden being exerted on the country’s economy by illiteracy is reduced if not totally eliminated. The pace of the NFLP in ensuring the eradication of illiteracy in Ghana is too slow and need to be accelerated a bit faster. I have noted with serious concern the current inadequate budget allocation to the NFED which is making y Ministry will take a critical look at increasing the budget allocation to NFED. In addition, my Ministry is in the process of sourcing external donor funding for the implementation of the Third Phase of the NFLP. We therefore invite all donor agencies interested in the development and progresses of this country to take up the challenge of funding the Third Phase to enable us reduce illiteracy to single digits and also to empower women.”

Talking on some achievements, he said it was gratifying to note that the NFED has provided functional literacy in 15 major local languages in Ghana in addition to English . “Through the development activities of literacy classes, several communities have benefited from the resourcefulness of adult literacy learners. Learners have been able to provide hand dug wells, constructed schools, nurseries, markets and planted trees in their communities in order to facilitate development in their areas of abode. It is reassuring that learners have not kept the skills they have acquired to themselves but used them to the benefit of their communities. Through Functional Literacy, women participants have contributed to family incomes.”

The Minister commended the management and Staff of the NFED, other providers of literacy in Ghana as well us collaborators of the NFLP for their immense contribution to the reduction of illiteracy in our dear country. “I want to extend special felicitations to the numerous volunteer facilitators, chiefs and other opinion leaders and district, municipal and metropolitan assemblies in the country for the contribution they have made towards improving the living conditions of their non-literate brothers and sisters”.

Functional literacy is indispensable in modern society. There is virtually nothing that could be done by an individual without utilizing reading, writing and numeracy skills.

To be literate is to be intellectually empowered. Intellectual empowerment leads to freedom and people who possess individual freedom have been able to discover their own identities and worked towards achieving them.

Functional literacy is the catalyst for realizing dreams, achieving goals and attaining objectives. Without Literacy, the world around us will be static, without promise and hope. There will be no cracking power to spark the engine of individual growth and development. There will be no key to open the door to development and achievement. The whole world will be locked up in a prison of underdevelopment and backwardness.

Countries with high illiteracy rate are at the cross roads of development and have become helpless and powerless to push the agenda of development forward.

BY: Michael Amedor