Ghana’s independent power producers, which produce almost half of the country’s electricity, say they could stop supply over government debt that amounted to US$1.4 billion as of June 30.
The debt continues “to accumulate, compelling the IPPs to contract costly loans to sustain their generations,” the Chamber of Independent Power Producers, Distributors and Bulk Consumers said in an emailed statement Tuesday.
“This situation is grim and there is a real danger of IPPs shutting their plants if the situation is not resolved in the immediate term.”
Ghana relies on private producers for nearly half of its peak demand of 2,700 megawatts. The 12-member group wants the government to share how it intends to repay its debt in a mid-year budget presentation on July 23.
It should also include measures to enable the state-run Electricity Company of Ghana Ltd. to pay suppliers on time, the group said.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Finance couldn’t immediately comment when reached on phone.
Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) in a joint exercise with the Military and Police service yesterday, embarked on strict enforcement of the wearing of nose masks as part of preventive etiquette to contain the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19).
The exercise which began at the Agbogbloshie market saw scores of commuters and visitors being sanctioned by the personnel.
As part of the sanction, they were made to desilt gutters and forced to purchase nose masks.
Some of the offenders stated that they were just closer to their homes and were not expecting to be sanctioned while others indicated that their nose masks were inside their bags and pockets.
“I am a visitor who is only left with my lorry fare but I was forced to buy the nose mask and compelled to sweep the market,” one of the offenders said.
The exercise forms part of government’s commitment in intensifying the mandatory wearing of the masks to ensure the health and safety of residents of the Greater Accra Region.
The enforcement was in line with COVID-19 directives issued by the Ministry of Health in accordance with President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo’s order making wearing of masks in public compulsory days after the lifting of the lockdown.
Relying on Section 169 of the Public Health Act, 2012 (Act 851), the Minister responsible for Health by Executive Instrument (E. I.65) declared COVID-19 a public health emergency and under Section 170(1) of the Act ordered a mandatory wearing of face and nose masks in public places as one of the preventive measures against COVID-19.
Since the announcement, majority of Ghanaians have largely complied with the directive, though many others continue to defy the order compelling the authorities to begin an exercise to enforce the charge as the scale of the pandemic grows, across the world.
The Regional Coordinating Councils (RCCs), as well as Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) nationwide, began enforcement of mandatory wearing of the masks.
Since the outbreak of the coronavirus, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has encouraged the wearing of masks as one of the ways to prevent the spread of the virus given that the disease is spread by droplets or travel through aerosols and contact with contaminated surfaces.
Security expert Professor Kwesi Aning says the gun action by Special Development Minister Hawa Koomson at a registration Centre in Kasoa undermines President Akufo-Addo’s fight against vigilantism in the country.
According to him, the MP is unfit to hold herself out as a lawmaker and also as a member of the ruling New Patriotic Party.
Speaking on Starr Today Tuesday, Head of the Department of Research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Centre said if the President does not take action against his appointee, the police will be weakened in their efforts at curbing vigilantism.
“This woman is a disgrace to her party, to the President, and to the republic. If we don’t sack this woman, the police will never be able to deal with anyone on vigilantism. She has undermined everything the President has done with vigilantism. Hawa’s behaviour is a disservice to the NPP, the President and everyone. She is a disgrace to the Republic of Ghana,” he said.
The MP who has confessed firing a warning shot at the centre claimed it was to defend herself after feeling threatened while touring registration centres in the constituency on Monday.
“I’m a Member of Parliament, I need to protect myself. It was at dawn; my police escort had not started work yet. So, that is the modus operandi I engaged in his absence,” she told Accra-based Adom FM.
Meanwhile, Pressure group OccupyGhana has called on the Police Service to prosecute the Special Development Minister if she found guilty in the shooting incident at a registration centre at Kasoa.
“We cannot have a registration exercise and then an election where people would feel so threatened that they would either stay at home and not vote at all, or go to the registration or polling stations armed. Ghanaians are already battling the spread of the dreadful coronavirus. This should not be combined with needless threats to our lives and safety.
“We call on the police to quickly investigate the circumstances under which this incident occurred. If it is found that the Minister breached the law, she should be prosecuted to the fullest extent possible under the law,” OccupyGhana said.
The Ghana Health Service’s (GHS) new strategy for the management of COVID-19 is to give priority to symptomatic cases under its testing regime.
This means that persons who present with signs and symptoms of COVID-19 and are sick, as well as all the contacts of those who confirmed positive, would be tested promptly.
Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service, announced this at the Ministry of Information’s press briefing in Accra, on Tuesday.
Additionally, he said, samples taken from exposed health workers, students and returnees would also receive immediate attention to ensure that they were quickly taken care of if tested positive, or be released without further delays if they proved negative.
He also said if someone had died without a proper history of the cause of death, the sample taken would be given priority to ensure the proper handling of the body to prevent contamination should it be a case of COVID-19.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye explained that the idea was to avoid the perpetuation of the backlog of samples due to the challenges earlier experienced by the testing centres regarding the shortage of test kits.
He, however, explained that during the period, the testing centres were giving priority to samples from the selected groups and that accounted the number of positives going up.
“A sample that is released two weeks after it is taken has very little public health and clinical meaning,” he said.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye said currently, all suspected cases of COVID-19, whether the individuals were sick or not, were treated equally as patients with the infection until their results had proven otherwise.
However, those who were sick were separated and housed differently to prevent the infection of others.
The Director-General urged citizens to maintain the adherence to the safety and preventive protocols, which included regular hand washing with soap under running water, or use of hand sanitisers, avoiding the touching of face (eyes, nose and mouth), and ensuring the proper handling of face covering.
“It is also important to observe the required social distancing rule when in public places, avoid close contact with sick persons, ensure regular disinfection of items and surfaces such as remote controls, mobile phones, door handles and washrooms, and quickly dial the 311, 112 helplines for assistance and further information on COVID-19,” he advised.
Meanwhile, Ghana currently has a COVID-19 active case count of 3,505, out of which 26 are severely ill, with eight being critical and four on ventilators.
The country’s cumulative COVID-19 positive cases are now 28,000 out of which more than 25,000 persons, representing 84 per cent, have recovered.
Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), on Tuesday, said no COVID-19 samples have gone bad as reported last week by some media institutions.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye, who was responding to questions posed by journalists regarding an earlier publication that some 3,000 samples collected from Takoradi to be tested for COVID-19 had gone bad, due to the lack of proper storage capacity by the testing centres, said that could not be the case.
He explained that the only grounds for which a sample could be rejected was when the specimen was improperly collected, citing examples such as providing saliva instead of sputum; and likewise when there was a spill due to improper handling, then, it may be unclear if another sample may have contaminated.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye gave the clarification when he took the time to give an update on the country’s COVID-19 case count and management, at the Ministry of Information’s bi-weekly press briefing in Accra.
He said the various testing centres had very good and huge storage capacities not only for samples of COVID-19, but also for other research purposes, and there was no doubt that all the specimens being given to them were properly preserved.
He said although he could not give the exact sizes of these storage capacities as they varied from cold boxes to fridges, he said, per the report given by Professor William Kwabena Ampofo, Head of the Virology Department of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research, at the last update two days ago, the Centre had a backlog of 20,000 samples, which testified of the fact that they had the storage capability.
As to how long the GHS was going to take to complete the backlog, Dr Kuma-Aboagye reiterated that the Service was no longer going to focus on samples that would not be of any relevance, but would prioritise those special cases such as exposed health workers, students, sick persons showing signs and symptoms of COVID-19, all contacts from those who have tested positive, and death from unknown causes to ensure proper handling of these bodies.
The service, he said, would continue working with more recent cases as they continue to deal with the response of COVID-19, saying, “as we get new cases, we focus on them, but would not be focusing on the backlog”.
Dr Kuma-Aboagye urged the public not to be weary of observing the safety and preventive protocols of regular handwashing with soap under running water, avoiding touching of the face, nose, and mouth, wearing of nose masks, effective cleansing of surfaces and items including mobile phones, remote controls, door handles, and washrooms, as well as maintaining the social distancing rule to prevent the spread of the virus.
The Government of Ghana has so far spent US$35million on testing 346,990 COVID-19 suspected cases.
The amount is not part of the expenditure on the expansion of testing capacity.
Deputy Minister of Health Dr Bernard Oko Boye who represented the Minister of Health, made the revelation when he updated Parliament on Ghana’s COVID-19 situation, in Accra, on Monday.
He said the cost of one Polymerise Chain Reaction (PCR) test on average was $100 for a suspected case.
The PCR tests were used to detect the genetic information of the virus and also gives indication of the person who is infected with disease, Dr Boye added.
He said Ghana has done 346,990 tests with a positivity rate of 7.9 per cent.
He said the number of tests done per million of a country’s population gives an indication of the commitment of the country towards fighting the pandemic.
He said the higher the test per million population, the more reliable the picture painted for that country.
Dr Okoe Boye stated that Ghana’s total case count as at July 16, 2020 stood at 27,667, with 148 deaths, 23,249 recoveries with an active case count standing at 4,270.
He said Ghana’s mortality rate deducing from the statistics was 0.5 percent, meaning for every 1,000 cases of COVID-19, Ghana could record five deaths.
However, Ghana’s COVID-19 death rate remains one of the lowest in the world, adding that the more efficient management of COVID-19 in a country, the lower the mortality rate.
Member of Parliament for Asokore, Dr Nana Ayew Afriyie, lauded the government for the effective management of the Coronavirus disease.
He said the country’s mortality rate, which was low, was not just by divine intervention, but as result of good decisions, better protocols and the structures put in place by government.
Dr Afriyie praised the Government for maximizing the resources allocated to the pandemic efficiently, but however challenged skeptics on the performance of the Government to rather applaud it for putting in measures to contain the disease, with a mortality of 0.5 percent.
The Most Reverend Dr. Emmanuel Asante, Chairman of the National Peace Council (NPC) has underscored the need for Ghanaians to learn to keep tempers cool ahead of the December 7, General Election.
He said, “An eye for an eye will leave everybody blind, and so let us, as Ghanaians, love Mother Ghana, and deescalate the tensions by saying and doing things that will not inflame passions. Let’s learn to keep tempers cool.”
In an interview with the Ghana News Agency, Rev. Dr. Asante who was reacting to reports of violence at some voters registration centres in some parts the country, said politicians must also learn to provide leadership, saying, “At such a time like this, we look up to them”.
“…politicians who are bussing people to places for them to register should stop. It is against the law, and it won’t help anybody,” the NPC Chairman said.
He expressed worry over the alleged shooting incident involving Ms Mavis Hawa Koomson, Minister of Special Development Initiatives at a registration centre in the Awutu Senya East Constituency of the Central Region and said it was important politicians acted as role models under all circumstances.
Rev. Dr. Asante reminded them of the Vigilante Act, Act 999, which made such acts punishable.
At least 3,372 persons confirmed positive of coronavirus (COVID-19) are receiving care from home, the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has disclosed.
The infected persons form majority of Ghana’s active case load which stands at 4,058 as of Saturday, July 18, 2020.
Director-General of the GHS, Dr Patrick Kuma-Aboagye, while giving an analysis into the country’s active cases at a press briefing in Accra yesterday, pointed out that the Greater Accra Region contributed 59.6 per cent (2,422) of the total number of active cases.
“The number of people in our treatment centres now is 299 and our current bed capacity across the country is 700 so we cannot be said to be overwhelmed. Those in isolation are 387 and places like the Pentecost Convention Centre alone, it is 600 bed-capacity,” he noted.
According to the Director-General, “in the last few weeks,” the country was seeing a decline in the number of positive cases “which means that our strategies and systems are working”.
He was quick however to remind the public not to be complacent with the current outlook and ignore the outlined safety protocols in order to minimise exposure to the virus.
“We should be more focused on reducing the load of active cases by not being reckless because we are not out of the woods yet,” he stated.
Touching on the reported cases of infections among students in some senior high schools, Dr Kuma-Aboagye revealed that all students suspected of the disease have turned out negative.
“With the exception of isolated mild cases, most of the students were asymptomatic and all of them have recovered. We are not having any surge so far and we are still taking measures to prevent any more infections so they can begin their examinations.”
The Head of the Virology Department of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Research (NMIR), Professor William Ampofo, indicated that the various testing laboratories across the country have begun taking delivery of supplies to clear backlog of samples.
“Close to 50,000 Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test kits and extraction kits have been distributed among other logistics that were in short supply at the various laboratories. We have identified six more testing sites and they are ready to begin testing.”
Prof. Ampofo, stressed that the “Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) guidelines on Rapid Diagnostic Tests (RDTS) testing has not changed and our test remains PCR. We are still evaluating the feasibility of other testing methods.
Ghana’s total case count of COVID-19 stands at 27,060 with 23,044 recoveries and discharges done.
According to the GHS, the cases came from “samples that were taken from the period June 22 to July 14, 2020 but reported from the laboratory on July 15”.
Six more casualties has been recorded putting the death toll at 145, with the number of persons in severe conditions at 25, eight in critical conditions and four others, on ventilators.
Koku Anyidoho says he is not going to join the NDC campaign trail because he’s not a magician to win the elections for the party at the last hour.
According to the former Deputy General Secretary of the party, he is currently occupying himself with the Atta Mills Institute, an institution created in memory of the late President Professor John Evans Atta Mills.
“I’m no more the Deputy General of the party and I’m focusing on my Atta Mills Institute. It’s out of the cradle; I have time for that one,” he said in an interview on Asempa FM’s Ekosii Sen programme on Tuesday.
In his estimation, it is too late for him to join the campaign team, therefore, he wants those who can perform magic to work very hard to win the 2020 elections.
“It is too late to join the campaign team; I’m not a magician. Let those who can perform magic work and win the elections,” he claimed.
It is unclear whether or not the former aide to the late president feels sidelined because he wasn’t included in the party’s campaign team.
In about five months to the general elections, the NDC has named its national campaign team with Professor Joshua Alabi as the National Campaign Manager and Alex Segbefia as his Deputy.
The others are Director of Operations for the campaign Lt. Col. Larry Gbevlo-Lartey (Rtd), James Agyenim Boateng as the Campaign Spokesperson, Mawuena Trebarh and Margaret Ansei as the Deputy Campaign Spokespersons, while Gen. R.S. Blay (Rtd) is the Strategic Advisor to the Campaign Team.
A case filed by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) at the High Court, General Jurisdiction, presided over by Justice E.K. Mensah, in which the biggest opposition party is challenging the legality of the Electoral Commission’s registration of final-year senior high school students on their ungazetted campuses, has been adjourned to October this year.
It will be heard after the legal vacation.
The EC’s statement of case and response to the injunction application had not been served on the court and the lawyers of the NDC when the case was called on Tuesday, 21 July 2020.
The EC also said, through its lawyers, that it could not sit during the legal vacation period, compelling the court to adjourned the matter to 26 October 2020.
After Tuesday’s hearing, a Deputy General Secretary of the NDC, Mr Peter Boamah Otokunor, accused the election management body of playing delay tactics.
The NDC is arguing that the EC’s decision to register SHS students on campus was unlawful, thus, its resort to the high court for “a declaration that it is illegal and wrongful for the Defendant [EC] to conduct registration at any place including campuses of a senior high school, which was not contained in the gazette and notification in accordance with C.I 91”.
Additionally, the party wants a “declaration that any such registration of voters, including students, that takes place at any ungazetted and unpublished registration centre, including senior high school campuses, is null and void and of no legal effect”.
The party is also seeking the court to restrain the “EC, its officers, agents or any other functionary personnel, from carrying out registration of voters in any senior high school or place not duly-gazetted or published in accordance with C.I 91 as amended.”
Before going to court, the NDC described the EC’s decision as bizarre following an Inter-Party Advisory Committee meeting.
Mr Otokunor told Class News in an interview that: “It is still a mystery what the EC wants to achieve in this country and what they want to achieve with this election”, adding: “It is very bizarre”.
“You have the case whereby you invite us to tell us that of all the gazetted registration centres where we’ll do the registration, where the registration is underway, you’re going to send the machines to every senior secondary school so that you can register the students as well in the schools”.
“Now, the law says that every station that you’ll send a machine to register must be a gazetted registration centre and it should be a polling station”.
“The law does not stop the Electoral Commission from creating additional centres, but you must follow the law and gazette those centres before you send the machines there”, he insisted.
Mr Otokunor said: “They are telling us that, from tomorrow, they are sending some of the machines to every secondary school to go and register them when they are not gazetted centres; when, by law, they don’t qualify to register anybody there”.
That, he noted, sets a bad precedence.
“So, by extension, what they are saying is that they can even move the machine to somebody’s room in the night beyond the gazetted time that ends at 6 pm and register people, and that is wrong, that is completely wrong”, he asserted.
“We have raised the issues, we raised it very strongly there, the meeting was inconclusive and it was not only the NDC, other political parties also think the same – that the approach is very wrong, they are not following the law and it doesn’t make sense”.
However, the General Secretary of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr John Boadu, said the NDC is resisting the move because it sees the beneficiaries of President Nana Akufo-Addo’s Free SHS policy as a threat to its electoral fortunes in the forthcoming 7 December polls.
Mr Boadu said: “They [NDC], I know, will obviously kick against students registering in this country. I used to be National Youth Organiser of the NPP. In all campuses throughout the country, including Ho Polytechnic, we won the elections there, so, if you are having a situation that we want to register our secondary schools, where not to even talk about beneficiaries of SHS, which the NDC knows is their waterloo, even before then, it is; so, kicking against it is something that if they had not done that, I’d be surprised”.
He said: “These are final-year students who number over 1.2 million. We, as a government, have decided that in order to protect these students, even parents should not visit them, we are not allowing other people from outside to visit them”.
“If we’re not able to provide them with the opportunity to be able to register, what it means is that: they may either have to go outside, which will increase the risk of getting infected with the pandemic, so, I think that it’s an arrangement that is looking at the dynamics on the ground”, he added.
“My little challenge that I was going to have is whether or not they were going to designate a new centre altogether because that will fly in the face of the law, that will not be legal but what they have agreed is [that], just as they have mobile registration kits that, at any given point in time, if people are cramming up at a polling station, they move in to augment and help the polling station in registering people, that they use the registration numbers of the centres they go, in this case, they are also going to use registration numbers of polling stations that are nearby the school in order not to create a new centre altogether that will be against the C.I.”, he explained.
“If they are to gazette it now, it has to take about 21 days…[and] by the time the 21 days elapse, the registration exercise is over”, he argued.
