Minority Leader Drops Bomb Over Merchant Bank

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Category: Politics

Created on Saturday, 01 November 2014 00:00

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Minority Leader Drops Bomb Over Merchant Bank

The Minority Leader in Parliament, Osei Kyei- Mensah-Bonsu, has revealed that funds used by Fortiz in the controversial Merchant Bank purchase were made available by the Bank of Ghana from the Second Tier Pension Fund.

Mr Kyei-Mensah-Bonsu is convinced that the government is only deceiving workers and “bidding for time” as it solicits for funds elsewhere to replace the used money.

IMANI Ghana, a policy think tank, had also stated that Fortiz used the 2nd tier pension funds lodged at the central bank to acquire a 90% stake in Merchant Bank - now known as Universal Merchant Bank – from SSNIT.

Workers in the public and civil service sectors in the past few weeks have been demanding to know where their pension funds have been lodged, how much has accrued and who are behind the Pensions Alliance Trust—the company government has appointed to manage their tier-two pension funds.

In protest, 12 public sector workers’ unions have declared an indefinite strike, bringing the country’s education and health sectors on their knees.

So far, the much talked about tier-two pension funds have risen to a whopping GH¢1.64 billion, according to the central bank—far more than the almost GH¢450 million Haruna Iddrisu, the Minister of Employment and Labour Relations, had indicated at his recent press conference on the strike.

Pensions Act

Per the Pensions Act, 5.5 per cent of the workers’ salary has to be deducted into a tier-two pension scheme whilst the employer (government) contributes 13 percent to SSNIT.

The new law was passed in 2008, with the year of implementation being 2010.

The first batch of contributors under the tier-two scheme is expected to retire in 2015 but workers want to be assured that their contributions are safe before theygo on retirement.

The Minority Leader, in an interview with Sunyani based Ark FM on Thursday challenged the government to come out and clear the air on the whereabouts of the money.

Untruthful

“If the Bank of Ghana says the second tier fund is with them they should come out and tell us when the money hit that account and its quantum…This government is not being truthful; has never been truthful to Ghanaians,” he said.

The Suame MP pointed out, “I am saying this unequivocally that, it is this same money they have given to some people to buy Merchant Bank. It is the workers’ money they used and that is the truth.”

NPRA Boss Explains

However, the Chief Executive of the National Pensions Regulatory Authority (NPRA), Laud Senanu, has disclosed that the GH¢1.64 billion figure represents contributions from the public and private sector workers as well as the interest accrued on investment of the funds.

Addressing a press conference in Accra earlier, Mr Senanu is reported to have said that the workers’ contributions were lodged safely into the Temporary Pension Fund Account (TPFA) at the Bank of Ghana, saying that the GH¢1.64 billion was in three components.

The first being the private sector workers’ contributions which were paid to SSNIT and later transferred into the TPFA. According to him, that had netted a total of GH¢521,885,987.36.

The second is the public sector workers’ contributions paid to the Controller and Accountant General’s Department and later transferred to TPFA, which had grossed GH¢488,768,270.73; and the third is the investment component, which had accumulated to over GH¢600 million—all amounting to GH¢1,641,11,027.70.

BY Jeffrey De-Graft Johnson

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Source: Daily Guide

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No ethnocentric battles at our backyard; Brong Ahafo

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Category: Culture & Tourism

Created on Tuesday, 09 September 2014 00:00

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No ethnocentric battles at our backyard; Brong Ahafo

When I arrived as a freshman in Secondary School in 1972, the senior prefect at my school was Snr. Lovi Mawunya. I kept wondering to myself how someone will travel the distance from Volta region to come to a sleepy Bono town for school.

Later on in life I would come to appreciate that the expansion of the boarding school system through the Ghana education trust was perhaps the greatest legacy of our first president, Osagefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah.

If you look across our sub region and see how ethnic and religious intolerance is tearing up communities around us one thing can explain how Ghana escaped this scourge; education. The vision to bring diverse groups of tribal and religious backgrounds together through the power of education has served this nation well.

At my school, this was the time when students of all tribes and religious backgrounds; Ga Gonja-Dagomba, Ewe, Ashanti Fante Guan would arrive at Techiman to enjoy the Annual Apoo festival and to socialize with friends in the town weeks before school reopened. My friends still call to inquire about the Apoo festival.

But today this noble vision is under assault as politicians and unscrupulous academics have invaded our schools in an attempt to recruit our youth into a dangerous tool as ethnocentric and puritanical crusaders.

Instead of the good old days of academic clubs and fraternities that promoted education, today’s institutions have seen the proliferation of ethnic and political based clubs TEIN, TESCON, Ashanti Students Union, Volta Student Union BASU etc with the sole aim of promoting ethnic identity.

If our honorable members of parliament today are making dishonorable comments about tribes it is because of the mistakes we made as a nation in allowing politicians to enter the most forbidden part of our society; the classroom. And so today’s Ghana, some speak of Ewes as if they are some alien tribe who just showed up at our doorstep, unwelcomed and unappreciated. Some peoples still do not want to accept Ewes as Ghanaians.

Anytime I go to Aflao and look across the border to the other side, I am reminded of the tale of two cities and my respect and appreciation of Ewes ever grows stronger. Here (Aflao) is a piece of real estate that could well have a priced suburb of a state capital like East Lagon or Adjiriganor in Accra.

The chiefs and people of Aflao could be making millions from selling land to well resourced businessmen, Kings and Sheiks who would pay any money to live in the bustling suburb of Lome. Yet in the plebiscite of 1956 the people of Aflao as did other Voltarians chose to be part of a country that does not even seem to appreciate them.

Recently the President of La Cote Ivoire has been making noise for not being consulted enough on the construction of Bui Dam, a dam that is twenty five miles well within the borders of Ghana. Imagine trying to build a dam at Akosombo on the Volta River when the Volta River is the international border between Ghana and Togoland. Volta region is the life blood to Ghanaians.

And so we talk of Ashantis as if they are the source of all our problems as a nation. Some people have made a successful political career from bashing Ashantis. It does not matter to them if Ashantis are perhaps the most welcoming, inclusive and enterprising people in Ghana.

Accra is the seat to government and that explains why people are drawn to our political and administrative capital. Besides that there is not a single town/city that has the attraction and preeminence that Kumasi has in Ghanaian society.

The president of Mali on a visit to Ghana intimated to our president that he was a proud Kumasi boy. The sad part of this is that many of those Ashanti haters are people with strong roots in Kumasi because of trade, education and religion.

The most ardent of these critics are second or third generation non Ashantis whose parents arrived at the capital of Ashanti region as economic refugees. Today their fortunes have turned, they sit in their penthouses and shout the loudest insult, cast aspersions and scorn the very base that offered them the shoulders to climb on.

Other unsavory comments are made of Fantis, Northerners and my Bono people. But could it be true as some have already indicted our generation, that the more education we got the more egocentric, spiteful and corrupt we have become.

My father had a canny way of breaking our conversation about my education. Anytime I to tried to engage him in an intellectual debate, he will looked at me with a jaundiced eye and tease me in Bono “sukuu b?b? man; school will destroy your generation”.

I know he didn’t mean it but if he did looking at what some unscrupulous academics and politicians are doing to our nation, are we not living the worst fears of the old man. So we can’t see how offensive and insensitive it is to refer another group of Ghanaians as inward looking. Last year, I went to the funeral in Takoma Park Md of a friend who was also a leader of the Ewe community of Washington DC metro the late Mr. Frank Kalipe.

Not until different groups of mourners got up and danced to different tunes from Volta region did I realized the cultural and linguistic diversity of the region. In any civilized and progressive country, sociologist will be hard at work trying to find out how a region so diverse in culture and ethnicity could find a way to live out the true meaning of the phrase “out of many, we are one” as a model of our own county.

When Ft Lt Jerry John Rawlings brought his reign of terror to the streets of Kumasi, we edged him on; let the blood flow. When Ashantis and their businesses were disproportionately targeted to punish and stigmatize one tribe for all the ills in society, we sung angelic verses to his name; our Junior Jesus.

Today Ex-president Jerry John Rawlings, Major Boakye Gyan and a bunch of pseudo socialist who brought us AFRC PNDC regimes, terrorized our people but ended up coveting state properties for their personal use are some of the richest people in Ghana.

The man who sold dog chains and “PK” to raise the capital that run a thriving business in Ghana is still reviled and demonized because of where he comes from. Because of our hatred for anything different from us, we’ve failed to acknowledge the germ others bring to this dynamic society. But as a nation have we always lived as if we were in each other’s throat?

No. If you knew the modern history of Ghana very well, you would know that the peace, tolerance and unity we enjoy today was secured and perfected by people who had little education but understood the essence of good neighborliness and the value of our common humanity.

The marauding slave raiding banditry of Samori & Babatu, the increasingly belligerent Ashantis and their expansionist wars coupled with the perennial Akan royal houses feuding over wealth, inheritance and succession created the largest internal migration this land has ever seen. Mr. & Mrs. Akan, the next time you meet a Voltarian with an Akan name, remember that the Togbe and the Lovi Mawunyas that you despise today may have been the very people who provided sanctuary and protection for your kin from certain death and destruction.

To my Ewe brothers, please don’t let your leaders turn you into victims in order to advance their selfish political ambition. Ewes are not under threat anywhere in Ghana. In fact if you follow the smell of Yorko Garri, you will find Ewes in just about every community in Ghana, If they are under persecution, the world would have heard about it by now. On the contrary, Ewes have been welcomed and assimilated into many communities and families in Ghana.

One of the first ordinances by Nana Akumfi Ameyaw III passed as Techimanhene was to amalgamate families and outlaw a reference to strangers/foreigners in his state. All foreigners living as guests to Techiman family unites were conferred with full rights and privileges of their host family. My best friend’s mother until her death last year was the matriarch of a prominent family in Techiman but she was born an Ewe.

The next time you run into a Techiman native, prod them a little further for you could be speaking with a Techiman native of Akwamu, Denkyira, Ewe, Guan or Gonja-Dagomba extraction. When war brought out between Konkomba – Nunumber in the summer of 1987 President Jerry John Rawlings was at his wits end.

This Konkomba – Nunumba conflict was gradually becoming a national security nightmare for his government. He turned to Wenchihene for advice and was not disappointed. Nana Abrefa Mbore Bediatou IV donated land and took personal interest in resettling Konkomba refugees in what is today a thriving Konkomba farming community of Buoku Junction.

The population of Brong Ahafo today is 40% made up of settlers communities mostly from the northern part of Ghana but she continues to share space and the little resources God placed under her care. We are Bono Kyempim Dueduakwa a people with the culture and disposition that says to the stranger; “Come You May Stand Upon My Back And Face Your Distance Destiny… By Maya Angelou”

This is the Brong Ahafo I knew growing up and that is why I say please don’t fight your ethnocentric battles at our backward. My Muslim Ivorian neighbors will swear to you that I am a Muslim, how else do I to know everything there is about Islam.

But why should they, I am from Wenchi and Banda and Muslim cultures are very much a part of me as my Bono and Christian heritage. Growing up in Wenchi, it was a tradition for we as Christian brothers to support to our Muslim friends during Ramadan fasting season and guess who was the first to show up at the mosque to join in the celebration of Eid.

As a nation we have a unique character that will make even Americans jealous about how Christians and Muslims should live together. This is why people of good conscience must stand up now and condemn the lunatic fringe of both sides who by their unguided actions can plunge this country into chaos and destruction.

The sad part about this is that some of the actors of this heinous crime against our nation are people with advanced degrees in their fields of study. People who were educated at great cost to the state and mother Ghana only expected them to use their knowledge and expertise to find solutions to our national problems.

They shamelessly placate their academic credentials behind their names while their contribution to our national debate is a call to arms for the destruction of the country that has wasted its resources on them.

Professors who went through harrowing conditions to impact knowledge in them have now become the target of insults and vilification because they belong to a different tribe. Looking back I may have thought at the time that my father did not mean what he said but he could well have been clairvoyant in his conviction that indeed Sukuu ab?man.

Thomas Kofi Kyeremeh

Germantown, MD

Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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Ghana’s big business and informal traders alike hit by crumbling economy

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Category: Business & Finance

Created on Monday, 29 September 2014 00:00

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Ghana’s big business and informal traders alike hit by crumbling economy

From internships for girls to large infrastructure projects, development in Ghana is being stymied by the fiscal crisis

Billie Adwoa McTernan in Accra

In the midday sun, young women and girls around Accra’s Makola market take a break from walking the streets carrying their wares to seek solace under the shade of a tree, napping with their babies in their laps.

There are thousands of girls like these dotted around Ghana’s big cities, having migrated from the north to the south of the country, uneducated and caring for their children.

Although the country is close to removing disparities in primary school education between boys and girls by next year and meeting the millennium development goal on universal access, the target for secondary and tertiary education is further off.

In the absence of government help, it is left to NGOs to offer young women alternative futures.

Since 2008, the Akua Kuenyehia Foundation has been providing scholarships, and organising camps and internships for bright secondary school girls whose parents are petty traders and small-scale farmers.

“To say that their families have a monthly household income of up to 200 cedis [about £32] would be too much,” says the executive director of the foundation, Akofa Bentsi-Enchill. “When you sit in the interviews or read their scripts [applications] you weep.”

Wilhelmina Bofla, 19, whose mother sells roasted plantain on the street, has benefited from the foundation. After completing secondary school, the foundation found her a year-long paid internship. She saved some of her income towards her university education. In September, she will take up a place at the University of Cape Coast.

But Ghana’s economic difficulties are beginning to affect the foundation’s funding, with local donations drying up. The country’s economic downturn is being felt at all levels of society, affecting big businesses and informal traders alike.

Cutbacks in the civil service loom, while payments for the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty scheme, which provides cash transfers to some of the country’s poorest people, were in arrears from November 2012 till October last year. This year, payments for March to June were made in July.

In August an initiative by the department of social welfare to remove children begging on the streets, acting as aides for disabled relatives, was put on hold due to a lack of funds. The department had intended to admit children into shelters and provide funding for their school and medical needs.

“It is not limited. The current fiscal challenges cut across all areas of government,” says Kenneth Owusu, senior policy analyst at the national development planning commission (NDPC).

With the private sector driving growth in Ghana, the economic slowdown has had a direct impact on development.

“Any time you see fiscal slippages you are likely to see the other indicators also performing poorly,” Owusu says.

“The ease of doing business is becoming quite troubling and the cost of doing business has increased significantly,” he adds. “There are power outages which are affecting most companies and other infrastructure challenges.”

Before the 2012 presidential election the ruling National Democratic Congress pledged to support women with small- to medium-sized businesses by widening their access to credit. But for some the support is yet to come.

In Labadi town, a neighbourhood close to central Accra, stand clusters of crumpled homes overlooking the sewage-filled sea. Here, 51-year-old Mabel Tetteh works as a secretary for the Labadi market traders’ association, a group made up predominantly of women.

“We have not had any help from government,” Tetteh says. The market traders are often approached by individuals offering high-interest loans, and with no other options the traders are left to deal with private lenders to expand their business.

Tetteh has spent her whole life working in the market – apart from a spell at school – and used to help her mother there as a child. Now, standing beside pyramids of tomatoes, onions, spices and grains, Tetteh proudly gestures towards her container of food that she was able to acquire through loans.

“We would prefer government loans as the interest rate would be lower,” Tetteh says. “But for now we don’t have that choice, so we are waiting for them.”

It may be a long wait, as there is a backlog of infrastructure projects that the government is looking to finance – including the repair and development of rail and road networks in the Eastern Corridor – as well as covering outstanding debt repayments.

The commission is pushing to pass a fiscal responsibility bill in parliament that would increase financial discipline, particularly in the finance ministry. High levels of spending, particularly on a large public sector wage bill, are partly blamed for the crisis.

“At the moment if the ministry of finance overspends they can just go to parliament and ask for a supplementary budget. There should be some sanctions,” says Owusu. “Development is the engine of the country. You cannot leave it to chance. We [shouldn’t] have to beg our developing partners to support the commission.”

Source: The Guardian UK

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Ethnic Pride Is Good, Ethnic Supremacy Is Bad

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Category: Culture & Tourism

Created on Sunday, 07 September 2014 00:00

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Ethnic Pride Is Good, Ethnic Supremacy Is Bad

I did not listen to Dr. Mensa Otabil's lecture on Ethnic Pride, in his "Living Word Series," so I cannot argue with the founder of the International Central Gospel Church over whether, indeed, Ethnic Pride is such a bad thing (See "Entertaining Ethnic Pride Dangerous - Otabil" 9/5/14).

What I can say in defense of Ethnic Pride, however, is that the latter is decidedly different from Ethnic Supremacy. And I have a feeling that the renowned inspirational speaker and preacher might have confused these two very closely related but, nevertheless, clearly distinctive terms.

"Pride," it is true, can and does often lead to "Hubris" and "Arrogance," but it does not need to. For instance, one aspect of pride is the concepts of "Nationalism" and "Nationality." The latter terminology deals with territoriality and culture; and it is not always clear which precedes the other - that is, whether a group sharing the same language first acquires land space and then develops its language and culture, or the vice versa.

What is clear is that identity and achievements are integral to human nature, and it is achievement that is rewarded with pride. Pride, fundamentally speaking, is a sense of either individual and/or collective self-worth. It crosses the "dangerous" line into Supremacy, when pride is perceived and experienced by a subject as evidence of superiority over one's neighbors.

Nationalism also has an invidious element of spacial/cultural exclusivity, often determined by culture, language and phenotype. However, nationalism as expressed among Third-World peoples in the wake of the massive European colonization of the non-European world, has almost invariably been in response to Western/White Supremacy, the purely political and fundamentally unscientific promotion and/or prosecution of racial supremacy.

Ethnic/Racial Supremacy has its beginnings in the West in the eighteenth century, a period that has been ironically characterized by most Western scholars and intellectuals as the Century of Enlightenment. It is ironic because it actually marks the false "scientificization" of the purely political and ideological. It also curiously and invariably celebrates the purported cultural, technological, economic and sociological differentiation of the Western-European Man from the rest of global humanity.

And so in a practical sense, African Nationalism is reactive rather than proactive, although there definitely is a proactive manifestation of the same. Significantly, however, the most radical among African Nationalist Scholars tend to be "Essentialistic" in orientation.

Essentialism presupposes certain innate qualities with which certain groups of humans are uniquely endowed by either Mother Nature or Divine Providence by virtue of Manifest Destiny, the self-arrogated status of "Exceptionalism" or privileged enlightenment which, somehow, authorizes one group of militarily advanced racial group or nationalities to dominate less militarily advanced racial groups for the purported benefit of the latter.

The reality, of course, is that it is the purported beneficiary of this lopsided, master-servant, relationship that gets wantonly exploited for the economic and material benefit of the dominant group. Dr. Otabil is right to observe that Pride does often lead to Ethnic Chauvinism and Supremacy, but so does eating more than one's fill often lead to illnesses and an unhealthy lifestyle.

And so the question that ought to be asked is as follows: Just because of the fear of the deleterious - or pernicious - effects of Pride, does it mean that we are better served by indulging in the denial of our diverse ethnicities and sub-ethnicities?

In other words, Ethnicity is integral to our humanity; and likewise the set of belief systems or mores that goes with the same. It is Pride that infuses our behavior with Dignity, Nobility, Civility and all the other eudemonious elements that make for a peaceful and progressive society. And so it cannot be that Pride is absolutely devoid of any redeeming features.

Indeed, it is the abject lack of pride in our sense of nationalism that has enabled many of our leaders to amass wealth and indulge in excessive luxury while the rest of society endures abject poverty and filth.

The recent cholera epidemic that convulsed our nation was the direct result of our collective loss of any remarkable sense of pride in our historically unique and privileged national identity. At the end of the day, Pride, as it can clearly be seen, is a double-edged sword - too much of it can, doubtlessly, lead to one's fall or existential failure; but so does too little of it lead to an abject loss of self-esteem and, with the latter, the eruption of anomie and decadence.

Source: Kwame Okoampa-Ahoofe, Jr., Ph.D.|E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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