circle-dubai

MAINTAIN CIRCLE – DUBAI IN THE CLEAN STATE 

After the construction of the Nkrumah Interchange, my fear was that in no time the streets would go back to its previous state. Thus the streets would be messed up with heap of rubbish and littering. But though it has not been a long time, I must say Ghanaians are really improving on their negative attitude towards cleanliness.
Zoom lion on the other hand, must be congratulated for their good work done by making sure the streets are kept tidy all the time. Hardly will one see a heap of dirt or litters on any corner of the streets at the Nkrumah Circle. In view of this, Ghanaians should be urged to continue with their positive attitude towards the state.
Hence, I suggest that the organisation in charge of the dustbins allocated at various points of the street should make sure they are emptied as early as possible whenever it’s filled up. I hope this will go a long way to maintain the current state of Nkrumah circle.

By Gloria Nyarko, Accra

court story

 Car dealer swindles customer
By Gloria Nyarko, Accra
A painter who allegedly defrauded one Anokye Adjei, a trader, has been charged before an Accra magistrate court.
Richard Amegadze pleaded not guilty to defrauding by false pretence when he appeared before the court, presided over by Mr James Kodjo Botah.
He was granted bail in the sum of GH¢9,000 with one surety and the case was adjourned to May 26, 2017.
Presenting the facts of the case, Chief Inspector Victor Dosoo said the complainant is a trader and resident at Kasoa, while Richard Amegadze, a painter lives at Amasaman.
According to Chief Inspector Dosoo, Adjei’s brother who is a taxi driver once picked Amegadze who told him that he was  a car dealer.
The taxi driver subsequently informed Adjei about Amegadze and Adjei contacted him for a car.
Chief Inspector Dosoo said on April 20, 2017, Amegadze met Adjei and a witness in the case at Cocoa Board in Accra and took GH¢8,800 from Adjei as part payment for a Mazda Saloon car.
The prosecutor said after taking the money, Amegadze took Adjei and the witness to Aflao were he claimed the car was located.
Chief Inspector Dosoo said Adjei then checked them into a hotel and abandoned them there.
 After that, his whereabouts could not be traced and all his phone lines were also not reachable.
According to the prosecutor on April 25, 2017, luck eluded Amegadze when he was arrested and handed over to the police by Adjei.
During interrogation, Amegadze admitted the offence and was charged accordingly.

Respiratory diseases on the increase

Respiratory  diseases on the increase
By Gloria Nyarko, Accra

Acute respiratory illness  linked to  air pollution is one of the top 10 reported  out patient cases in healthcare centres in Ghana.
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The Deputy Director of  Environmental Protection Agency(EPA), Mr Emmanuel Appoh, who disclosed this in an interview with The Mirror in Accra said the trend had pushed respiratory diseases  to the second spot as one of the top killer diseases in Ghana, after malaria.

He said emissions from rickety vehicles, open burning of refuse and plastic/electronic waste, bush burning, industrial pollution among others were contributing  to the pollution of the atmosphere.

According to health experts, more than 6.5 million people in the world die annually as a result of exposure to air pollution with children and women being the worst affected.

Mr Appoh, therefore, called for the removal of rickety vehicles from the road: adoption of proper farming methods and the enforcement of regulations on waste burning.

Measurement
 He explained that in 1997, the agency started  an air quality  assessment in the country using  air monitoring stations categorised into residential, commercial, industrial and roadside.
Mr Appoh said due to inadequate supply of air monitors the agency adopted a USEPA portable air monitors with filters which were mounted at vantage points in most suburbs of Accra to prevent dust, emissions from vehicles, bush and open burning from getting into the respiratory tract of humans.
He, however,  explained that the filters in the monitors could not completely expunge the menace but  reduced it. 

Menace
A visit by The Mirror team to  some principal areas of Accra including Agbogbloshie, Adabraka, Kaneshie and Chorkor  revealed some of the habits  contributing  to  air pollution.
For instance, a resident of Agbogbloshie, who was spotted  burning refuse told The Mirror,  “We cannot quit burning refuse around the vicinity. Else we would not be able to stay here for a minute. The stench will kill us faster than the emission from the burning refuse”.
Ibrahim Mahammudu admitted that even though he had heard of the health implications of air pollution, there was no other option than to burn the refuse  to reduce the overpowering stench it emits.
According to him, almost all the market women and the residents in the community dumped their refuse at the site  and since the stench  was unbearable, the only option left  was to resort to burning in spite of the health risks. 
He, therefore, appealed to the government to put measures in place  to recycle all waste products to improve the health of citizens
Many residents in other suburbs gave a similar account of the situation .


DVLA
Meanwhile, the  Public Relations Officer of the Driver Vehicle License Authority (DVLA), Mr Francis Asamoah Tuffour, told The Mirror that the authority and  the Motor Transport and Traffic Directorate (MTTD) of the Ghana Police Service would soon clamp  down on drivers who use rickety vehicles on the road.
He, therefore, advised drivers to present  their vehicles for review before using them. 

Accra not Ghana

ACCRA NOT GHANA

Though Accra is the capital city of Ghana, it seems to have much attention than the other towns and cities in Ghana. So many activities goes on in Accra whiles other cities and towns do not get to partake or sometimes do not even hear of them.

Sometime ago, I read an article by Inusah Mohammed about a graduate from the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ), Mardiya Suleman Cheiba, who was posted to a remote village in the Northern Region of Ghana called Nsuanayili. Cheiba got to the village only to be met with total deprivation. The pupils didn’t understand any language aside their mother tongue and it was very impossible to teach them without that language. They attended school under trees, some do not concentrate in class because they come to school on empty stomachs, others too had to walk back home to eat during break time and come back to continue the days lessons. The part of the story that really touched me was when the pupils were given a puzzle and they did not know what to do with it, they had never seen anything of that sort and surprisingly, even the headmaster didn’t know the use of the puzzle. Yes of course, this story wasn’t written in Afghanistan, it is right here in Ghana.

On our televisions or radios, you will hear news upon news from our leaders about how a thousand and one schools under trees have been eradicated. About how a thousand and one schools have been built, how teachers have been dispatched all over the country, how our educational systems are moving on smoothly. You will see and hear stories upon stories about how the life of the ordinary Ghanaian has been improved upon, how Ghanaians are doing better now than the previous years. The question is, if Ghanaians are doing well how come parents can’t pack up lunch for children to go to school but these children must go and come back to eat meagre meals. How come the ordinary cannot afford a car to carry his or her children to school? If our educational system has seen improvement how come some children still learn under trees? How come school going children cannot communicate in the English language? The answer is simple; we base our judgements on what we see in the cities.

Take a tour throughout the well to-do vicinities in Accra and everything appears perfect. Children are doing well in schools; parents are able to provide the needs of their children. Businesses are booming. Everything appears perfect. No hardship, no poverty, no depravity, basing our judgements on these vicinities is one of the greatest harms a nation can do to itself.

I once heard a story about researchers who do no research at all. These work-shy researchers will take up contracts that require them to, for example, research into child labour. We all know that such work requires going to the field, but these men and women will sit in their air-conditioned offices, contract some photographers and a few voluntary hands to go to “bankyease” village, take pictures of Egya Atta’s children whose only chore is to carry some cassava home to feed the family. The pictures are brought to the capital where these researchers employ their ingenuity and create brilliant portfolios, they take the money and Egya Atta’s children do not get even a tinny bit of it. After sometime, pictures of brilliant looking Accra children are sent up as feedback reports. And the cycle continues...

You may ask why I am keen on recounting this story. Most often people see how things are going on smoothly in the cities and jump to the conclusion that it is the same all over the country. When researchers are tasked to research into problems facing the rural areas, they only go and capture an aspect of the people’s lives, they capture the part that will satisfy and leave the real story behind. At the end of the day, no problem is solved. Yet they get their monies. If someone had told me about existing schools under trees, I would have branded the person a liar. Why not, after the noise politicians make about how their government have established schools and improved upon education and the lives of the ordinary Ghanaian.

This is what most of us do, because everything is going on smoothly in Accra, we jump to the conclusion that everything is going on smoothly in the entire country, but just so you know ACCRA IS NOT GHANA. We cannot represent the entire country Ghana by just its capital city Accra because Ghana is not just Accra. There are a whole lot of other cities, towns and villages that come together to form the country. Therefore, basing on the developmental trends in only Accra to measure the developmental trend of the entire country is detrimental. I think, instead of sitting on TV and radio and making noise, I think our leaders should pick their “arses” up and get to the rural areas to work. They should stop deceiving us with the goodies in the city. We would love to see the deprivation in the rural areas reduced if not fully removed.

As citizens, it will be beneficial to us to read wide and find out what is really going on in our country before jumping to conclusion. Just as most of my friends err in judging me by little aspects of me, so do we err if we only conclude that our country is doing well by only following trends in the capital. It is true that the capital is the face of the country that other countries see but then a face is not a face without eyes, nose, lips, etc. Therefore all the other parts are important.

After all is said and done, Accra is not the only city, town or village in GHANA.