The National Security of this country has been entrusted into the hands of a boy by name Larry Gbevlo Lartey. A boy in mind and at heart though he is advanced in age.
That is the only reason he would be senseless enough to personally issue threats at the editor of this paper. Someone should tell that boy to do his worst. Death is the ultimate. It is an inevitable end. Beyond that there is nothing he can do. He should abduct us (as he did to our editor on March 16, 2011), torture us, detain us, kill us and burry us in mass graves. After that he should live forever or perhaps grow and metamorphose into a hard rock.
Many at times, we make the mistake of thinking that any male child who crosses his teen years automatically becomes a man. Nothing can be further from the truth. Being a man is not about age, neither is it about muscles. It is about having brains that work, a mature attitude and having a sense of responsibility.
That Gbevlo boy, instead of focusing on his job and respecting the authority that appointed him, wastes his time on petty trivialities and hops from one radio station to another talking like a parrot that has eaten too much pepper.
Which National Security Coordinator who has the brains of a man would go on radio to debate and trade near-insults with top guns at the Presidency? Which National Security Coordinator who has the brains of a man would enter into a fight over who becomes or who does not become a District Chief Executive? Of course, only a boy would behave that way because boys have no sense of loyalty. They easily grow wings and get drunk with the little (temporal) power put in their care.
Instead of finding solutions to the security concerns of this country, that Gbevlo boy, would spend his time monitoring and doing a near-espionage on journalists and editors who he thinks are critical of him.
He is yet to appreciate that the two idiots trailing workers of this newspaper are simply on a wild goose chase. It is either they spend their time celebrating laziness and go to him with bogus information, or they simply see him as someone whose instructions are not worth following.
That is the only reason they would (mis) inform him that someone in this office meets with a certain top military officer for information. When we heard it, we laughed and popped open a bottle of (none alcoholic) champagne because we got delighted the dudes are reading from an old dusty diary.
What amazed us the most was the fact that the journalists he is sponsoring with the tax payer’s sweat at Dzorowulu seems to be more current with information than the two lazy idiots who think they are trailing journalists. If Gbevlo had asked his journalists, they would have told him that we now have eyes and ears in his own office.
Just when we were wondering whether or not the Gbevlo guy would ever grow into a man, we heard him on radio justifying the senseless attack on Gifty Lawson, a female photo-journalist who was lawfully going about her duties.
The poor lady was taking photographs of a suspect on the compound of a court, outside the court room when Gbevlo’s boys grabbed her, assaulted her, put their filthy hands into her panties in public, abducted her and shoved her into their vehicle, dumped her at the headquarters of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI) and released her hours later with no charges and no apologies.
Yet Gbevlo sees absolutely nothing wrong with this? That is the attitude of a boy. Boys never accept mistakes. They never take responsibility. They have an allergy for the three magical words “I am sorry.” They use their muscles to bully girls. They act with their hearts rather than their heads.
It is only a boy who would live in a glass house yet have the guts to throw stones. A boy would have dry raffia stuck in his pants yet would jump over fire. Instead of investigating how his own signature got forged in his own office and used to cash huge sums of money, the Gbevlo boy is running round chasing after lizards and hurling stones at them. Our only regret is that he is paid with our taxes.
It is still a mystery why the President exercised a voluntary blindness to the several mature minds that wanted the job and gave it to this boy.
The hens have come home to roost and Gbevlo has proven that when you give your pearls to swine, they trample on it.

Source :Daybreak 

The Appointment Of E.T. Mensah As An Overseer Is An Error Of Judgement

I author this piece in the interest of the education of all Ghanaian children and in the national interest. I am disappointed and disillusioned and so are many observers and sympathizers of our great National Democratic Congress (NDC) about events in the last few days leading to the appointment of Mr. E.T. Mensah to lead the political discourse on education as its overseer.

I consider this appointment as a complete error of judgment on the part of the president and those who offered him this advice. It is unfortunate that at a time when the general Ghanaian populace is dissatisfied with the outcomes of our educational engagements from the foundation level through the tertiary level, we will have the impudence to now begin to rub salt in their wounds by appointing a clueless and incompetent individual like Mr. E.T. Mensah to lead the national discourse on education. Let me be blank to say that Mr. E.T. Mensah should not even for a split of a second lead Ghana’s educational discourse for there is nothing he would bring to bear on that all-important discourse.

If, indeed, at its current state, the NDC lacks individuals with the requisite skills, the competence, and the hands-on experience to lead the national discourse on education, I am sure nothing prevents the president from extending a hand to an academician who can fill the void until such a time when a substantive card bearing member of the party is found to lead the educational discourse. After all, the logic on which we elected Professor John Evans Atta-Mills was because of his academic credentials. If that logic still holds, to the extent that some of us believe that a teacher who doesn’t understand simultaneous equation cannot teach it, then we expect the learned professor to respect Ghanaians and ensure Ghanaians get value for money. “How on earth can you appoint Mr. E.T. Mensah to head the vacant education ministry when we have stalwarts like Dr. Ekwow Spio-Garbrah on the sidelines watching the unfolding events?” a caller who woke me up this morning to the story quizzed.

I do not want to belabor why E.T. Mensah’s appointment to the education ministry will only add to the undying crisis that has engulfed the NDC administration. I urge the president to return immediately to the drawing board to rectify this obvious blunder before it is too late. Ghana doesn’t lack the needed human resource to turn its fortunes around. It is the lack of vision, courage, and the dynamism to ensure we have the right mix of skills and competency in its political leadership to take bold decisions that will inure to the benefit of the whole nation that is causing us to still be wandering in the woods without a destination.

Once again, I reiterate the point that Mr. Enoch Tei Mensah does not have what it takes to lead Ghana’s educational discourse. There are thousands of Ghanaian professors who have excelled in the area of education and can bring their knowledge and expertise to bear on the educational system. Let’s, for once, be sincere to Ghanaians.

Prosper Yao Tsikata

NDC Member and Activist.

By Solomon Mensah

When night falls and the “Abayees” are snoring heavily like Okonkwo does in his sleep, brisk businesses are born on pavements of Accra. The items sold range from consumable to non-consumable goods. Brassieres, foot wears, jewels, and “kye-bom” with bread are but a few wares that compete with pedestrians on the pavements and spill over onto the streets of Mayor Okoe Vanderpuije’s Millennium City.

Clinking of bells, soothing voices calling on passersby to buy, sign languages and many more constitute traders’ advertisement. As someone born and bred in the woodlands of the Brong Ahafo Region, I get curious when I walk in the streets of the capital. In my part of the world, the sun does not set on traders. Back at Dodosuo (my holy village), one has to knock on Maame Kwaayie’s door when it is 6pm for condiments. And if it becomes your habit to be knocking on traders’ doors after sunset, you can easily be (mis)taken for a witch. But that seems to sharply contradict the marke ting trend in big cities. “Their market knows no night,” I mummer to myself . It is 8:10pm and I am walking down the lane leading from the V.I.P Bus Terminal at Kwame Nkrumah Circle towards the Ghana Commercial Bank tower. Men, women and children are seen busily buying and selling. I am so trapped in the crowd that I have to walk sideways like a man who has lost his bearing to alcohol. A young woman in her late twenties has the neck buried in the clothing she sells. Her right leg is mounted on a small post and one hand dipped into the pocket in an attempt to ‘balance’ a customer. Next to her is another fairly old woman selling a pile of second-hand clothes.

Asare Emmanuel sells ladies’ bags. He tells me this lane is the Circle Odorna Market. On a blue polythene rubber spread on the pavement, his stuffed bags sit like bull frogs in a swamp. “Oh the night market here is good. I make good sales each night”, Asare explains why he sells at night.

But aside this flourishing venture at night, the question as to whether it is good selling on pavements is what must be the concern of authorities of the city, if not the sellers and buyers.

Asare’s friend, Kwabena says the Abayees (AMA city guards) do not allow them sell on pavements. He corrects my impression of the Abayees sleeping heartily at night. For him, the Abayees only sleep with an eye closed.

“They come here sometimes around 11:30pm after us,” he screams into my voice recorder and makes a passionate appeal. “Please, tell them we beg them.” Business seems to be thriving in the night markets, especially as the economic rains of the single ‘swine’ sorry ‘spine’ keeps falling. But this act of indiscipline must not be allowed to continue for long. Pavements are meant for pedestrians’ passage but not for market. Simple! The night markets on the pavements have also become safe havens for pick-pockets. They mingle with the crowd and take advantage of the human traffic to terrorise unsuspecting passersby.

The most annoying attitude of traders on the pavement is the fact that they see it as their right to do what they do. In one of my rush hours to catch Burma Camp bus at Tema station for lectures, I got humiliated by a trader. My crime was my unknowingly kicking a pair of shoe he displayed on a pavement. The least attempt to rid our cities and towns of such acts of lawlessness is often met with the accusation of rendering people jobless. But the fact that there are no jobs does not mean that we should compound the situation with behaviours that have the tendency of making life uncomfortable for people in our towns and cities. We must all help the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) to make our city clean and safe.

The writer is a student-journalist at the Ghana Institute of Journalism. Email: [email protected]

………..and falls on the dagger!

Worry no more about the jeopardy of the nation’s educational system; recording a massive failure in last year’s B.E.C.E. results – the then educational head is not even clean! She goofed with a fat pitch.

Maybe Betty Mould-Iddrisu needs to go back to the basic level (or pupils’ class one) and master spellings through “Dictation.” She needs some English lessons.

No wonder the nation’s educational system is going down in haste. Schoolchildren performed poorly under a poor minister.

If the then Minister of Education doesn’t even know spellings; could easily disgrace herself on a global platform, how does one expect schoolchildren to pass their examinations? Her grotesque weakness is appalling. Maybe, she thought she was dealing with a group of imbeciles; do anything and get away with it.

She posted an error-filled – and even lacking a full stop (.) – comment while she was at the same time talking about education: “acommodation” for accommodation, “asessment” for assessment, and “unaccetability” for unacceptability.

On Thursday, January 19, she laid a political grenade revealing a clear commingle of imbecility and incompetence – when showing a hypocritical solidarity for schoolteachers – on the social networking site, Facebook:

“I speak of more teachers accomodation being built all over Ghana and especially in the rural deprived communities, competency based asessments so headteachers are trained to manage, building teachers capacity, GES being alive to the unaccetability of not paying teachers for months, govt providing incentives and packages including facilitating purchase of means of transport, arrears and allowances paid promptly ..tbc,” posted by the just resigned Minister of Education, Betty Mould-Iddrisu.

That was a devastating and horrible performance by Ghana’s education chief, and got dozens of dumbasses – who live on another planet – to applaud her.

It’s too bad for the then education guru to tweet such lines riddled with errors. Someone must tell her to improve on it.

After shining light on her poorly tweeted grammar, I’d couple of her sympathizers who came to her defense and described it as “trivial.”

She knows that “competency based on (her) assessment,” did not qualify her to be where she was.

If the performances of schoolchildren are rated, so do that of the captain of the ship, too. The failed students may feel relieved if they learn that the self-yanked Education Minister has issues with spelling and grammar.

What you do makes you; her defects have become her.

She got it wrong in a row; left it on her page to roll – and it’s still rolling.

You can even ask her what she achieved since she took over the sinking ship and the answer will be simple: Zero. She’s no idea on how to fix the mess in Ghana’s education.

Through this same woman, the nation has mysteriously lost “gargantuan” sum of 52 million Ghana cedis to Alfred Agbesi Woyome.

She was nearly yanked from government as the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, but later was saved by the Ministry of Education – and that is an area that is not of importance to the Mills-Mahama government.

And this made her go ballistic on the social utility to launch her extreme frustration with an improper grammar and ugly spelling.

Surprisingly, in less than a week after going public with her feelings, she fell on the dagger.

Jerry Amponsah (Sabbato) NPP Communication Group New York

Over the past month or so, The Ghanaian Chronicle has taken Nana Addo to task over his educational policy. In the said policy, aptly titled “Teachers First Educational Policy,” the first point of exit for pre- tertiary education would be at the Senior Secondary (SSS) level instead of the current system that has, over the years, thrown at least 50% of our children on the streets every year. To make the SSS exit point possible and accessible to all, Nana’s policy would make SSS education free.

To the Chronicle, Nana’s vision is too ambitious to be possible. As such, in an editorial, in I.K Gyasi’s column and recently, by Emmanuel Akli- in an article, “Politicians and Phantom Promises”-the question posed, in different forms, was how Nana was going to fund his free education. While the funding question is legitimate, it is surprising that after three major policy speeches –the Liberty Lectures, the Hamburg and the TESCON speeches, in which Nana laid out his main points- citizens are still not aware of how Nana would fund his educational policy.

In the Hamburg speech last June in Germany, Nana clearly made it known how his educational policy would be funded if giving the nod. “We intend to enhance quality of education in every public school in Ghana in our overriding goal of building a new society of opportunities by committing, BY LEGISLATION, A SIGNIFICANT AND CONSTANT PERCENTAGE OF OUR GDP TO EDUCATION,” stated Nana. In short, what Nana intends to do for education is what has been done for local government through the District Assembly Common Fund (DACF). Currently, 7% of our GDP is set aside for District Assemblies. So why can’t it be done for education? And as Nana rightly pointed out in the Hamburg speech, “the current situation, which has seen the percentage of GDP devoted to education decreasing gradually since 2009 …. do not show a nation serious about its future.” And indeed, we are a nation with misplaced priorities. For how could we devote 7% of GDP to District Assemblies (DACF) – toothless body due to patronage- and ONLY 2% of VAT annual receipts for the Ghana Education Trust Fund (GETFund)? At the first meeting of the Volta Regional House of Chiefs this year – after the House had vowed to change voting patterns at last year’s general meeting- Togbe Afede XIV expressed his outrage and surprise at the high cost of SSS education and how it was making it difficult for the poor to access SSS education- in his region. The government representative at the meeting, Ghana’s High Commissioner to Malaysia, Mr. Dan Abodakpi, promised the House that he would take it up with the Education minister- lip service.

But Togbe Afede XIV and all well meaning Ghanaians know that nothing is going happen, for education is not Mills’ priority. A perfect example is how the government intends to waste money on providing motor cycles to all assembly members instead of giving them to teachers or National Service personnel posted in the educational sector in remote areas- the first batch had already been delivered to members in the Kumasi Metropolitan Assembly of all places…for votes I presume.

As a nation however, our only hope for the future in this globalized world is to put education first. And only Nana Addo has been able to spell out a vision meant to achieve this goal through his “Teachers First educational policy.” To the naysayers, there is nothing phantom or unsustainable when it comes to Nana’s educational policy As long as a percentage of the GDP would be set aside, backed by legislative instrument, Nana’s free SSS education is as feasible as the DACF….unless a P-ndc majority in parliament decide to vote against it when the time comes.

Akwasi. A. Afrifa Akoto

By: Christian Kpesese

Ghanaian Companies have over the years been relegated to the background to play second fiddle to foreign firms when it comes to involving themselves in industry, finance and the general control of the national economy for the maximum benefit of its people. In a sense, we seem to have forgotten that, Local Content is the degree of local ownership, control and financing by citizens of a host country in a specific venture or entity that promotes and enables the optimal use of the country`s human resources, raw materials and services. From the above definition, it is obvious that, the need for Ghana to develop a local content policy/legislation is long overdue. It is even more crucial and relevant at this point in time of the nation`s development when the country seems to have no choice than import almost everything.

It is therefore welcome news to note that, the Volta River Authority [VRA] is perfecting its vision of setting the standard for Public Sector excellence in Africa by organizing the first ever stakeholders forum on ways of maximizing local content as an important component for development.

The forum was on the theme; “Practical Initiatives for Promoting Local Content Development in the Power Utilities and Related Industries in Ghana – The Way Forward“. It brought together stakeholder experts from Academia, Industry, manufacturing and knowledgeable policy formulators who brainstormed and agreed on measures required to ensure capacity building to enhance local competitiveness, create better conditions for economic growth, employment generation and the development of the nation as a whole. VRA alone spends over 1billion US dollars annually on the importation of goods and components as part of its procurement processes. It has for over 50 years dealt mainly with foreign consultants and contractors for the purchase of components for construction and the maintenance of the Akosombo Dam, the Kpong Dam, and the Takoradi Thermal Generating Plant with little or no involvement of local partners.

The Local Content concept has the potential of reducing drastically or eliminating the financial burden of VRAs procurement system through foreign exchange. It would also strengthen relationship with indigenous contractors and create more jobs for Ghanaians.

The Volta River Authority`s major objective of ensuring and implementing a local content policy entails the following;

• Exploit the country`s resource endowment in an environmentally sustainable manner

• Attract increased local value-added investment in the industrial sector

• Facilitate technology transfer to Ghanaians and

• Domesticate knowledge, expertise and technology in industry.

It is important to note that, until the advent of a local content policy formulation agenda, foreign investors are not obliged by any law whatsoever to have local partners, employ indigenes, transfer technology and know-how or even have citizens of host nations of their firms in management positions. The development of a local content policy would require expatriate investors to obey laid down regulations and empower citizens to overcome challenges and limitations such as finance to do business, capacity building and the transfer of technology and knowledge to enable indigenes take control and maximize the benefits to the state and her people.

To demonstrate its commitment to a local content agenda, VRA has set up a Local Content team to develop strategies and put in place measures for the effective implementation of local content in VRA`s procurement process.

It is also gratifying to learn from the visionary leadership of VRA who has positioned itself as a strategic industry and gone ahead to set up a local content team and desk aimed at developing a suitable local content for the consideration of the envisaged National Content Policy covering all sectors of the economy.

VRA has indeed set the pace. It is hoped that other sectors of industry and the economy including, Tele- communication, Pharmaceuticals, Construction, Mining and Manufacturing would take a clue from the VRA example.

The Volta River Authority believes in the discipline of getting things done quickly and professes values of trust, integrity, innovation, teamwork and accountability.

The media cannot afford to be left behind but lead the crusade to ensuring that, the country develop a comprehensive National Local Content Policy to defend, protect and preserve the future generation.

[email protected]
024-6798847-The Insight