We’ll End Load-Shedding – NPP

Published in Daily Guide on October 25, 2012

 

Nana Akomea

By Charles Takyi-Boadu

The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has promised to end the load-shedding exercise that the country is often bedeviled with when voted into power.
At a press conference in Accra yesterday, Communications Director of the party Nana Akomea said, “When it becomes necessary to ration electricity, the NPP will depart from the current situation where whole areas are blacked out totally.”
He believed the current mode of load-shedding, which was ‘total blackout’, was “archaic and too distressful”, wondering why the nation would undergo a load-shedding exercise when the Akosombo Dam was operating normally and at its peak.
The situation is said to be having a terrible toll on businesses, industries and households, welfare and social lives of millions of Ghanaians as some households have been exposed to robbery attacks.
Nana Akomea said the NPP was considering a number of options in regulating efficient power supply to every Ghanaian home including “simple (radio controlled) domestic devices that shut off parts of the electricity supply (say higher power consuming devices), leaving power available for essentials (lighting, radio etc)”.
He stated that the party planned to “assist domestic consumers to acquire portable, battery-operated power banks (akin to UPS) that store power and make it available for considerable time when the mains is off”.
Another backup arrangement, according Nana Akomea, was to “assist and encourage consumers to install simple, inexpensive solar systems to provide power to essential domestic devices when the mains are off”.
He disputed the NDC government’s claim to have increased power supply over the last three-and-a-half years, noting that “this ‘unprecedented’ boost is being made and repeated even as the nation has for months been suffering from electricity rationing.”
In order to achieve its promise of an industrial and economic transformation, he said, there was need to boost energy supply in the country.
In that regard, the party’s Communications Director stated, “Our presidential candidate is solidly committed to investment”; the reason for which Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo had “outlined his commitment to investment in energy to spur our industrial take off”.
He urged Ghanaians to support the NPP by voting for the party to achieve these energy goals for Ghana.

Doctors Give Out Cocaine Man

Published in Daily Guide on October 25, 2012

The cocaine pe;;ets retrieved from Kwaku Sarfo at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital

By Charles Takyi-Boadu

Ghana seems to be gradually becoming a hub for the trading of narcotic drugs, with the latest being the bust of another Ghanaian, Kwaku Sarfo, in possession of 77 pellets of substances suspected to be cocaine.
This time around, it was not at Heathrow Airport in London but right here in Ghana where the suspect has been arrested and detained by the police.
The officers at the Korle Bu Police Station received a call from medical doctors at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital to attend to an emergency at the facility.
The officers arrived at the facility to witness a suspect who had been operated on to retrieve swallowed pellets of cocaine.
Director of Narcotics Unit of Police Criminal Investigations Department, Superintendent Cuthbert Aapenguo, who confirmed the story to DAILY GUIDE, said upon arrival, the police officers were ushered into one of the male wards at the surgical block of the hospital where 59-year-old Kwaku Sarfo lay.
Surgeons had then removed as many as 77 thumb-size pellets of the substances which were neatly wrapped in condom-like rubbers.
The doctors were said to have called in the police because they were not sure of the substance.
They therefore took an inventory of the drugs and took over the case.
Sources at the hospital said the suspect first went to a private clinic complaining of severe stomach pain but had to be rushed to Korle Bu upon realising that there was more to it than he had merely said since his condition was degenerating and there was a need for a surgical operation.
Upon reaching the hospital, Kwaku Sarfo was said to have been taken to the surgical/medical emergency ward but he had to be taken to the theatre for surgery after which the drugs were detected.
Though he was said to be in a critical condition yesterday, Superintendent Cuthbert said he was responding to treatment.
The police are yet to ascertain where the suspect took the drugs from and other details about him.
“We are continuing investigations to find out how he even got  to the hospital…so when he is okay, then we will be able  to get that information,” the police chief said.
He has since been placed under a 24-hour police guard at the hospital.
A couple of weeks ago, cannabis weighing 1.5 tonnes which was concealed in fresh fruits and vegetables from Ghana, with a street value of $8.6 million, was busted at the Heathrow Airport.
A day after the wee arrest, British officials announced the interception of some cocaine consignment smuggled from Ghana weighing 7.5 kg, with a street value of $ 1.5 million, virtually making nonsense of government’s claim to have clamped down on the drug trade.