Eddie's Dailies

Few days ago, I boarded a bus from Nungua to the Kwame Nkrumah Interchange, my usual route. As I hurled myself into the bus after covering a 600-metre journey by foot under the scorching sun, the sweat that trickled down my chin onto one of the seats was predictable. In my long sleeve shirt, I could feel the flow of sweat from my neck to my waist. To worsen the situation, my handkerchief was nowhere to be found when I dipped my hand into my pocket in an attempt to wipe my drenched face. Since the filthy dusty around the neck of the conductor was not an option, I suffered the embarrassment in good faith. Lo and behold, when I looked up to the ceiling, there hanged three separate packs of tissue made available to passengers. In total disbelief about such a VIP treatment in a trotro (popular name for mini-buses used in public transportation), I did not hesitate to wipe the heavy moisture on my face. The relief offered me by the bus with the registration number GT 4952 – 17 has given...

THE cost of electricity in the country’s industrial zones has been identified as a major demotivation for women to own industrial businesses, such as milling and metal fabrication which require heavy consumption of electricity. It has, therefore, been recommended that subsidies be given to women who are very entrepreneurial and were using electricity productively to enable them to scale up their businesses as part of efforts to bridge the gender gap in the industrial sector. The recommendation was made after a study was conducted by the Institute of Statistical, Social, and Economic Research (ISSER) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in the United Kingdom. The study, which examined the productive uses of energy between men and women, gathered responses from 118 business owners sampled within the Light Industrial Zones (LIZ) of Brekum, Techiman and Tuobodom in the Brong Ahafo Region. Out of the total number of respondents, only 12 of them, representing 10 per cent of...

Pupils at the LEKMA Southern Cluster of Schools located at Teshie in the Ledzokuku-Krowor Municipality defecate openly on the school’s compound while five toilet facilities in the schools are locked. Information pieced together by Eddie's Dailies, indicate that the facilities, four of which were renovated and one newly constructed, await inauguration before the pupils are allowed to access them. It was gathered that the project officially commenced in 2016 under the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area (GAMA) Sanitation and Water Project and supervised by the Ledzokuku Municipal Assembly (LeKMA). It consist of two 12-seater W/C, two 10-seater W/C, and the newly constructed four-seater W/C. It was also gathered that work on the rehabilitation of the facilities stalled for more than a year but resumed in 2017 during which the pupils were restrained from using the facility. Following the long wait, the pupils, most of whom are in kindergarten and lower primary, resort to emptying their bo...

  THREE environmental advocacy groups have urged the government to come up with a strategic plan towards the upgrade of the Atewa Range Forest in the Eastern Region into a national park status. The groups, A Rocha Ghana, Ghana Wildlife Society, and the Concerned Citizens of Atewa were unanimous in their justification that an upgrade of the forest would ensure a long-term security of it and sustainably provide efficient public goods and services to the people. At the opening of four-day exhibition organised by A Rocha Ghana in Accra today to showcase the unique features of the Atewa Forest, the groups maintained their dissatisfaction against government's decision to mine bauxite in the forest. In July 2018, the government in the mid-year budget review, announced a $2 billion deal with a Chinese engineering firm, Sinohydro Group Limited, to fund infrastructure projects by the government. Sinohydro Group Limited of China, according to reports, would provide $2 b...

Mrs Cynthia Morrison (M), Minister of Gener, Children and Social Protection presenting items to the Mafi Dove Clinic In their 8 th month of pregnancy, women in Mafi-Dove, a town in the Central Tongu District of the Volta Region are compelled by custom to flee their motherland to secure a safer place to deliver regardless the cost and risks involved. For centuries, these women, who had become victims by birth and settlement, had lived under the "spell" of either losing their babies right at birth or accept to raise children with mysterious diseases should they even deliver on their homeland mistakenly. For fear of becoming victims of the long-held belief, the gravid woman, in the heat of her baby bump, disconnects herself from the warmth of her husband and embarks on a tortuous journey across the Volta Lake to Adedome , the District Capital and other neighbouring towns where they are given the green card to labour peacefully. This has been the genera...