APA – Accra (Ghana)
The assurance by the Government to the general public, in particular, the families and acquaintances of Ghanaians in the Sudan that every effort is being made to ensure the safety of their loved ones until their arrival in Ghana is one of the leading stories in the Ghanaian press on Monday.
The Graphic reports that in the past one week, the Republic of the Sudan has been gripped by a deadly conflict between the Sudanese Armed Forces and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces, resulting in avoidable casualties.
Khartoum, the capital, has been the epicentre of the clashes with civilians being most affected.
A number of Ghanaian nationals, particularly students, have been affected by the conflict.
Ghana’s Honorary Consulate in Khartoum reports that all of our nationals are safe.
The Ghana Embassy in Cairo, Egypt which has concurrent accreditation to the Sudan, working closely with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration and the Honorary Consulate are coordinating the evacuation of our nationals, and plans are currently underway to secure their safe passage to Ethiopia.
Government wishes to assure the general public, in particular, the families and acquaintances of Ghanaians in the Sudan that every effort is being made to ensure the safety of their loved ones until their arrival in Ghana.
The Government of Ghana joins the International Community to appeal to the warring factions to cease fire and allow negotiations to resume for the sake of the peace and safety of the People of the Sudan.
The Ghanaian Times says that Ghana is near the end of approving a herbal product to support the treatment of COVID-19.
Out of a total of 11 products being researched into by the Centre for Plant Medicine Research (CPMR) at Mampong in the Eastern Region for possible treat¬ment of the disease, “Immunim,” hitherto an immune booster drug, has proven to have at least 90 per cent efficacy against the SARS-COV-2 virus.
Pending the completion of pre-clinical and clinical trials, the herbal product is tipped to be Ghana’s first herbal drug to treat COVID-19.
The Director of Research and Innovation at the Centre, Dr Kofi Donkor, made this known to journalists yesterday when the Minister of Health, Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, paid a courtesy call on the management of CPMR to familiarise himself with their operations.
The visit also afforded the Min¬ister the opportunity to inaugurate an expanded clinic building in honour of Dr Oku Ampofo, the first director of the centre, to administer traditional and herbal medicinal care to the public.
“We are currently at the pre-clinical level which should be complete within the next two months, then we can begin clinical trials, which involve testing the drugs in humans and once that is successful, we can get market authorisa¬tion to use it for the treatment of COVID-19,” Dr Donkor said.
According to the director, out of 31 people who tested positive for COVID-19 and put on the herbal drug, 28 have tested negative after two weeks of being on it.
“The ability of the herbal product to clear the virus within two weeks provides a useful candidate for the treatment of COVID-19,” he stated.
The newspaper reports that strong gains in some share prices drove market activities on the Accra bourse in March this year, the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) has said.
The GSE Composite Index (GSE-CI), which tracks the performance of all companies trading on the Accra bourse, increased by 14.01 per cent in March, bringing the year-to-date gain to 12.33 per cent, the GSE said in the summary of March 2023 market activities copied to the Ghanaian Times.
“The continued rally of the GSE-CI was underpinned by dividend announcements from some listed companies and investors seeking to diversify their holdings,” GSE stated.
It said the volumes of and values traded on the Accra bourse went up significantly by 2,730 per cent and 588 per cent respectively, over the previous month mostly due to block trades in MTN Ghana shares.
The total value of 181,344,788 were traded on the market at a value of GH¢199,048,178.41, while total market capitalisation of the Accra bourse at the end of March stood at GH¢67,846.89.
The report said TOTAL shares went up by 39.82 per cent, MTNGH, 35.87 per cent, UNIL, 33.78 per cent, BOPP, 20.93 per cent, and GGBL, 9.49 per cent, and they made up the top five price gainers in March.
However, the GSE Financial Stock Index, on the other hand, achieved a year-to-date loss of 11.98 per cent in line with investors’ expectations of reduced profitability in 2022 for financial stocks.
On the equities market, the report said, the volume of shares traded in March stood at 173,658,609 valued at GHc167, 969,700, both down by 19.22 per cent and 29.17 compared to the same period last year.
The Ghanaian Times also reports that the Electoral Commission (EC) is to insist on Ghana Card alone as the only document for voter registration under the Constitutional Instrument (CI).
It explained that Parliament had not rejected the CI intended to achieve that but had only made proposals that were not binding on the Electoral Management Board.
“Although both sides of Parliament expressed reservations with the CI before going on recess, processes for laying the document has not been totally gone through for the Bill to be laid, and claims Parliament has rejected the CI are untenable,” the Commission noted.
Dr Serebour Quaicoe, the Director of Electoral Services at EC, said the election management body would ensure the CI was brought before the House again so as not to disenfranchise all eligible voters however, the committee expressed qualms about scrapping of the guarantor system.
He indicated that it also objected to the Commission’s move to limit continuous registration exercises to regional, district capitals and offices determined by EC however, observations of Parliament were proposal which the Commission was not bound by them.
“We are not bound by those proposals, we have been given a constitutional mandate, they have given us processes we can go through, all those preliminary procedures are issues supposed to be form of negotiations and I do not think they are binding on us.
“The only thing the Constitution has prescribed is, if Parliament do not agree, then the document should be laid and reject it, so any other issue is just proposal,” Dr Quaicoe said.
Before Parliament went on recess, Jean Mensa, Chairperson of EC, assured the House the CI was not for the compilation of a new voter register but was for continuous registration and not for new register.
She pointed out that under the limited voter registration processes, registration was conducted at limited periods and was not done all-year-round for such persons who turned 18 after registration period could not do so after the time set for limited registration, which usually was within two to three weeks.
GIK/APA