MILITARY HOSPITAL SETS UP PROBE

A board of enquiry is being set up by the management of the 37 Military Hospital to investigate allegations of detention and torture of some commercial drivers and their mates by military guards at the hospital as punishment for traffic offences in front of the hospital.  “The board will determine the charges to be levelled against the culprits,” a source close to the hospital’s management told the Ghanaian Times yesterday.  This paper reported yesterday that for the past three weeks, recalcitrant drivers arrested by military guards for parking wrongly in front of the hospital or dropping off or picking passengers there, were allegedly detained in the hospital’s mortuary as punishment. The punishment also included cleaning and arranging corpses and mopping the mortuary floor.    By Edmund Mingle, The Ghanaian Times

Inside Mugabe’s World

South African writer Heidi Holland is one of the last non-Zimbabwean journalists to have interviewed Robert Mugabe. She spent two hours with him last December after pursuing the Zimbabwean president for months. This is her description of that encounter. While I waited outside Robert Mugabe’s office in the foyer of State House, his spokesman hissed at me to get to my feet. Jumping up, I followed the frozen gaze of a dozen officials who stood to attention suddenly. Behind my chair, Zimbabwe’s president had appeared in a doorway, motionless and staring straight at me.

Heidi Holland, South African writer

Andanis and Abudus, North v North

The Abudus and Andani’s are meeting the Asantehene, Otumfuo Osei Tutu for the third time. The meeting will deliberate on the way forward towards resolving the impasse between the two rival chieftaincy clans in the Northern region. Two previous meetings ended up in a stalemate over the burial of the late Dagbon overlord, Yaa Na Mahamadu Abdullahi. The Abudu’s want to perform the funeral rites of their late King, Yaa Na Mahamadu Abdullahi in the Gbewaa Palace. But the Andani’s suspect the Abudus will proceed to enskin an Abudu Overlord once given access to the Gbewaa palace. They have therefore vowed to resist with force, any attempts by the Committee of Eminent Chiefs to have the Abudus enter the Gbewaa palace to perform the funeral. Today’s meeting is expected to bring an end to the protracted conflict between the two factions.

Source: Ghananewstoday.com

Rawlings Exposed

In-depth investigations conducted by The Statesman have established that the education of two of former President Jerry John Rawlings’ daughters abroad was funded by a British water company – Biwater – which paid 7,000 Pounds Sterling a term per child.  A few years ago an independent newspaper based in Accra, reported that after his government had created the Junior and the Senior Secondary School (now Junior High and Senior High School) system, the former President deemed it more expedient to educate his children abroad using the Ordinary and Advanced Level system, which his government had discredited.

The children, Ezanetor and Amina Rawlings, were sent to Millfield public school in Dorset – a classy institution that charges very exorbitant fees. The fees were described as scholarships paid for by Biwater, which was then bidding for the management of Ghana’s water supply system.

By Peter Atiemo