Youth & Politics

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We are entering the period where money will be use to buy delegates to vote the wrong person to power....hmmm

Its about time the youth start to vote base on policies implementation and not base on party preference

Some 307 ambulances will be dispatched to the various constituencies after a commissioning ceremony on Tuesday, Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has said.

Commissioning of the ambulances was initially scheduled for January 6, 2020 but was postponed to January 28, 2020 to allow for the training of Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT) and arrival of all the buses.

Addressing a press conference today [Sunday], Mr. Nkrumah said the ambulances were procured under government’s one million dollar per constituency initiative and will create jobs for over a thousand people.

Mr. Nkrumah said in addition to the approximately 307 ambulances, clearance has also been given for 575 EMTs to be recruited out of which 450 have been recruited.

“First of all, some 307 ambulances are being dispatched on Tuesday to the various centres. Clearance has also been given for the recruitment of 575 emergency medical technicians, out of which over 450 have been recruited and trained,” said Mr. Nkrumah.

The Minister disclosed that Tuesday’s commissioning by the President follows the completion of training of paramedics, fitting of tracking device, upon receipt of the full complement of ambulances.


He further charged the National Ambulance Service to properly maintain the ambulances for longevity.

“Government expects the Ambulance Service to maintain this investment to ensure longevity. It is further expected that this injection will be put to good use to serve the good people of Ghana and add to ongoing efforts to secure livelihoods.”

“Additionally, we encourage all to take note that the budgetary allocation of 1m USD per constituency is what is being used to fund this fleet, an indication that in addition to the other initiatives of the MSDI ministry, that IPEP program is yielding results” the Minister stated.

A few weeks ago, Health Minister, Kwaku Agyemang Manu had said the ambulances parked in front of the State House will be commissioned and deployed regardless of if they have all arrived in the country

A ceremony to begin the distribution of the ambulances, initially set on January 6, 2020 was postponed following a request from the National Ambulance Service and endorsed by the Health Ministry.

Backlash over delays

The first batch of ambulances arrived in September 2019 and have been parked at the State House.

During a press encounter, President Nana Akufo-Addo said he wanted all the ambulances made available before distribution to avoid any accusations of bias.

“The Minister for Special Development Initiative told me some of the ambulances were in and asked if she should distribute them and I said no, she shouldn’t. She should wait for the others to come in so that we can distribute all at the same time…Fortunately for us all of them will be in by the end of this month and on the 6th of January, I will commission them and the distribution will take place simultaneously and nobody will accuse me of favouritism, and so on. There is no justification on they being parked but if I was to send it here and not here I think you know the kind of discourse that will come.”

The Minority in Parliament accused the government of insensitivity in refusing to distribute them.

It further said the government was taking Ghanaians for granted following the postponement of the commissioning date from January 6 to January 28.

Pressure Group Occupy Ghana also expressed its disappointment with the delays saying it was a sign of gross irresponsibility.

Ghana’s 29 million population currently has only 50 functioning ambulances.

The statistics indicate that one ambulance is shared by over 520,000 Ghanaians.

This is well below the recommended population to ambulance ratio of one ambulance to 25,000 people.

Sydney Casely-Hayford, a member of OccupyGhana, believes the Electoral Commission’s (EC) compilation of a new voters’ register is needed to finally clean the electoral roll.

Speaking on The Big Issue, he argued that the integrity of the data was “the most critical thing” in the argument over whether a new register was needed.

“This is a serious opportunity for us to once and for all get the data in that register corrected because there are too many things that have gone wrong,” the social commentator stated.

Mr. Casely-Hayford said he did not think the current register was clean despite the Supreme Court order in 2016 to remove the names of persons who registered with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) cards after a 2014 lawsuit by Abu Ramadan.

There were concerns that there were names of foreigners in the register because non-Ghanaians have access to the NHIS card.

The EC eventually removed 56,000 names from the register in line with the order.


But because the NHIA card is a popular mode of identification, Mr. Casely-Hayford said: “there is a lot of likelihood that we still have people on the voters registered with an NHIA card.”

“That case wasn’t dealt with thoroughly enough and there should have been more people but it looks like we had a political compromise,” he added.

Concerns over integrity of current register

Back in 2016, observers like IMANI expressed doubts with the EC’s claim that only 56,000 Ghanaians were captured onto the voters’ register using the NHIS card as proof of Ghanaian citizenship ahead of the 2012 elections.

Pressure group Let My Vote Count Alliance had suggested that the there were 4 million people on the roll which used NHIS cards for registration.

The Coalition of Domestic Election Observers also suggested that such data was going to be difficult to collate, and questioned how the EC could meet the six-day deadline given it at the time.

New register plans

The EC plans to abandon its current biometric verification system and procure a new one which has a facial recognition technology hence the need for the new voters’ register.

It also wants to replace outmoded biometric machines to better address verification challenges that could occur.

Parliament has approved about GHS390 million for the EC to procure the new biometric system despite opposition from civil society and some political parties.

The EC has however said it is ready to engage the various political parties at odds with its plans.

The registration exercise will take place between April and May 2020 over a period of 50 days.

The Roads and Highways Minister, Kwasi Amoako Atta has said the government intends dualizing the Central Corridor road, following the recent crash on the Dompoase road.

“We try to improve the road conditions. Safety measures are being taken. If you look at this stretch, it is one of the best roads in our country. This road is earmarked for dualization. We are currently dualizing part of the central corridor. If you talk about the central corridor, we are talking about the road from Accra, through Kumasi to Tamale to Paga. These are all plans that we are working on and they are at various stages of implementation.”

On the dawn of January 14, 2020, 35 people died while 57 others were injured after an intercity bus with registration number GR 5704-18 collided head-on with another bus with registration number GN 3780-10 at Dompoase near Elmina in the Central Region.

The crash occurred when a vehicle moving from Accra towards Takoradi tried to overtake a vehicle ahead in a sharp curve thereby, colliding with an oncoming vehicle en route to Accra.

Road Safety Authority begins investigations into deadly Dompoase road crash

The National Road Safety Authority has begun investigations into the deadly road crash saying that “multi-disciplinary” investigations are expected to inform the next line of “remedial actions and measures” to prevent future instances of such road crashes.

In a statement released on Wednesday, the Authority said the investigation is aimed at identifying the contributory factors and other possible institutional lapses that accounted for the crash.

The National Road Safety Authority, also cautioned motorists and the public to be mindful of their personal safety and that of other road users.

“In the interim, the public is reminded that road safety is a way of life that can be achieved by observing basic safety precautions on speeding, wrongful overtaking, fatigue and distractive driving, while passengers are expected to assume frontline roles by speaking up against driver misbehaviour.”

Driver in Dompoase road crash remanded

A driver of one of the buses involved in the deadly crash at Domopoase in Elmina, Mark Mireku has been remanded into police custody.

The Central Police Commander, COP Paul Manly Awuni made this known to Citi News, saying Mr. Mireku is expected to appear in court on January 31, 2020.

“The Hyundai bus driver was treated and discharged yesterday. He was immediately picked up and detained.”


Mr. Mireku has also been charged with negligent driving.

Good morning fam
Hope you all doing great 👍

The Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) has blamed a fault on its Tema-Accra transmission line for the outage experienced in parts of the country today, Friday, January 17, 2020.

It said the fault resulted in its generation facilities tripping and subsequently resulting in unstable power supply to customers.

GRIDCo said it detected the problem at 12:20pm but by 2:30pm, it had resolved it.

The Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo) wishes to inform the general public that at 12:20PM today, one of our transmission lines from Tema to Accra developed a fault.

As a result, a number of our generation facilities tripped, leading to outages in Accra and other parts of the country.

Our Maintenance team responded immediately to restore the affected transmission circuits and power supply has since been fully restored to all parts of the country at approximately 14:30PM.

GRIDCo apologizes for any inconvenience caused and remains committed to its mandate of delivering reliable power supply, GRIDCO said in a statement.

Many customers on Friday complained about experiencing intermittent power outages which they feared could affect their electrical appliances.

The development comes after a blackout experienced on Wednesday night in most parts of Southern Ghana.

There is yet to be an official communication from companies within the power distribution chain to that effect.