The scheduling of the 2021 Population and Housing Census for Sunday, June 27, 2021 by the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) and the presentation of a cheque for GH₵120 million to the Ghanaian government as dividend for 2020 are some of the trending stories in the Ghanaian press on Friday.
The Graphic reports that the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) has scheduled the 2021 Population and Housing Census for Sunday, June 27, 2021.
The census was expected to take place in 2020 but had to be rescheduled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ahead of the exercise, the Vice-President, Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia, will today launch the countdown, dubbed “100 days to 2021 Population and Housing Census”.
The countdown is a series of activities which will be rolled out by the GSS in the next 100 days to sensitise the public to the census.
The Census Advisor to the Government Statistician, Mr. Kofi Agyeman-Duah, told the Daily Graphic that the GSS had made all the preparations for the census.
He said census was a process, and the GSS had, therefore, been preparing for its night for at least two years.
The newspaper says that Gold Fields Ghana Limited (GFGL) has presented a cheque for GH₵120 million to the government as dividend for 2020 for holding 10 per cent free carried interest in the company.
The amount represents dividend from the company’s bigger mine in the country — the Tarkwa Mine.
Under the country’s mining laws, the state owns 10 per cent carried interest (shares) in large-scale mining companies in the country.
The Executive Vice-President and Head of Gold Fields West Africa, Mr. Alfred Baku, led a team of the company to present the cheque to the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr. Samuel Jinapor, in his office in Parliament yesterday.
Handing over the cheque, Mr. Baku said the dividend was besides the corporate tax that the company paid last year.
“This is not inclusive of the royalties that we pay and this is not inclusive of all the other things that we do for the host community. As a company, we do a lot of corporate social responsibility as well,” he stated.
He said the company should have presented the money to the government in 2020 but had to reschedule the payment to this year due to the outbreak of COVID-19 in Ghana.
The Graphic also reports that the government of the Netherlands has commended the Government of Ghana for exhibiting strong political will and taking timely decisions in the interest of safety and wellbeing of the citizens since the outbreak of the pandemic.
It said beyond the several health interventions, the Dutch Government has noted with great admiration the far-reaching socio economic interventions introduced by the government to lessen the impact of the COVID-19 restrictions on Ghanaians especially the poor.
The Netherlands Ambassador to Ghana, Mr. Ron Strikker, stated this during the stakeholder briefing on the establishment of National Quality Assurance Programme for COVID-19 testing laboratories.
He said he was convinced that the strong partnership between the Ghanaian health authorities and the Dutch Government had helped improve the quality of COVID-19 test results in Ghana.
He said this partnership with Ghana was part of efforts to support the 23 COVID-19 testing laboratories in the country to enable them deliver results that meet the global standards, regardless of their location in the country.
“I am personally proud of the work done by the Ministry of Health, the GHS National Laboratory Network for COVID-19 Testing, the FDA, the HeFRA and PharmAccess Foundation,” Mr. Striker noted
The DailyGuideNetwork says that a total of 405,000 persons have been vaccinated against the Covid-19 from March 2 to 18, data from the Extended Programme on Immunization (EPI) of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) has shown.
These are from 43 selected districts in the Greatet Accra, Ashanti and Central regions.
Those vaccinated include frontline health workers, adults aged 60 years and above, people with underlying health conditions such as diabetes, kidney diseases, hypertension, cancer, frontline security personnel, frontline government officials, the media, and all front-line workers in the formal sector.
Presently 250,368 persons in Accra, 187,510 persons in Kumasi and 11,293 in the Central Region, have recieved thier first jab of Covishield, the Oxford AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine, under the first phase on the exercise.
In all, 20 million Ghanaians are expected to be vaccinated against the virus.
Programme Manager of the EPI, Dr Kwame Amponsa –Achiano, told Ghana News Agency in Accra on Thursday, that females formed about 62 per cent of the number vaccinated so far.
He said about 63,033 persons with underlying health conditions, 91,000 adults aged 60 and above, about 72,332 health workers, 23,000 front line security personel, and over 48,000 essential service workers have recieved thier first jab.
GIK/APA