The report of 12 new polio cases recorded in Ghana since the beginning of this year and Canada’s donation over five new 30-seater buses to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) for distribution to some agriculture colleges in the country are some of the leading stories in the Ghanaian press on Friday.
The Times reports that 12 new polio cases have been recorded in Ghana since the beginning of this year. The 12 cases make it a total of 31 circulating vaccine-derived polio virus Type Two (cVDPV2) cases since the outbreak of the disease was declared in August 2019.
The figures were given by the Acting World Health Organisation (WHO) Country Representative to Ghana, Dr. Neema Rusibamayila Kimambo, at a fundraising breakfast meeting organised by the Rotary Club of Accra-Airport yesterday.
The breakfast meeting was to raise funds to support polio fund in commemoration of the World Polio Day 2020.
The World Polio Day is marked each year on October 24 to commemorate Jonas Salk, who invented the Inactivated Polio Vaccine.
Dr. Kimambo indicated that globally, a total of 26 countries had reported outbreaks of cVDPV2.
She said WHO, together with other partners of the global eradication initiative, had supported the government of Ghana to conduct supplementary immunization activities against polio in all the 260 districts of the country from September 2019 and October 2020, reaching about 6.2m children who are less than five years old.
The newspaper says that Canadian High Commission in Ghana yesterday handed over five new 30-seater buses to the Ministry of Food and Agriculture (MoFA) for distribution to some agriculture colleges in the country.
Aside the vehicles, the colleges will receive quantities of Veronica buckets, hand sanitisers, nose masks, liquid soap and rolls of tissue to support their fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.
The donation, valued at GH¢1.5million, the High Commission said, sought to improve the teaching and learning of agriculture in the colleges as well as enable the students to embark on field trips.
The beneficiary institutions are the Ohawu College of Agriculture in the Volta Region; the Animal Health and Production College at Pong in the Northern Region; the Kwadaso and the Ejura Agriculture Colleges in the Ashanti Region; and the Damango Agricultural College in the Savannah Region.
The Times also reports that the Minority in Parliament is questioning the circumstances under which Frontiers Health Services Limited was awarded the contract to test passengers for the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) at the Kotoka International Airport.
In the view of the caucus, the circumstances surrounding the award of the contract to a company registered in the tax haven of Dominica Republic, is opaque and that government must provide clarity on the processes leading to the award.
At a media briefing in Parliament yesterday, the Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, asked: “How was this contract for charging US$150 per passenger awarded? What procurement process was used?”
According to him, per their sources, the company was registered on July 21, 2020, just few days to the commencement of its operations.
“The company, as we have investigated, is owned by Health Care Solution Services Limited which is owned by the Peters Family Company Limited also incorporated in June 2020.
“The Peters Family Company Limited itself is registered as an offshore company in Dominica Republic.
“Therefore we don’t want to believe this is another case of family and friends business,” the Tamale South MP said.
The Graphic says that former President John Mahama has said that he will grant amnesty to all small scale miners popular referred to as galamsey operators who have been imprisoned under the President Addo-Addo-led government if he wins the December 7 presidential election.
Speaking at Odum Banso in the Mpohor Constituency in the Western Region on Thursday, October 22, 2020, Mahama expressed concerns about why a Chinese galamsey queen was freed but Ghanaians imprisoned for the same mining offence.
He told the chiefs and people that: “It’s sad. The government said it was fighting galamsey and they arrested, prosecuted, and jailed Ghanaians who were engaged in that activity but left the Chinese woman.
“Today, they are still in prison. That Chinese galamsey-queen was arrested but left to go free. She was never prosecuted but our people are in jail suffering.
“When we come, we shall grant all those arrested and jailed some amnesty. They will come back to their homes and work. I believe that they have suffered enough, shown remorse for whatever wrong they committed. We have instituted measures to check the operations of small scale mining…”
The newspaper reports that the government will deploy 70,000 enumerators for the national population and housing census (PHC) scheduled for April next year.
The Ashanti Regional Chief Statistician, Mr. Abekah Ansah, said the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic had triggered a postponement of the census, which had initially been scheduled to take place this year.
He said $90 million had been budgeted for the exercise, which he described as “very important and necessary for national development”.
Mr. Ansah made the disclosure at a symposium in Kumasi yesterday to mark World Statistics Day and International Year of Women in Statistics and Data Science.
The International Statistical Institute (ISI), in collaboration with the Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis (LISA) of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), organised the event to commemorate the day.
GIK/APA