Daily Heritage July 18
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Quake Edition 112.qxp_Layout 1 7/17/17 8:53 PM Page 8<br />
WWW.DAILYHERITAGE.COM.GH<br />
DAILY HERITAGE TUESDAY, JULY <strong>18</strong>, 2017 11<br />
Politics<br />
Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only<br />
way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work.<br />
And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you<br />
haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters<br />
of the heart, you'll know when you find it — Steve Jobs<br />
Recognise efforts of RICCS<br />
and DICCS—WAG Country Director<br />
THE COUNTRY Director<br />
of WaterAid<br />
Ghana, Mr Mohammed<br />
Abdul-<br />
Nashiru has<br />
expressed the urgent<br />
need to recognise the efforts and<br />
contributions of the Regional Interagency<br />
Coordinating Committees<br />
(RICCS) and the District<br />
Interagency Coordinating Committees<br />
(DICCS) in the country’s<br />
quest to improve access to basic<br />
sanitation, especially at the rural<br />
level.<br />
Mr Abdul-Nashiru praised the<br />
institutions for being at the forefront<br />
of turning open defecation<br />
practices to open defecation free<br />
situations at the local levels.<br />
Speaking during the opening of<br />
the Fifth National Basic Sanitation<br />
Forum in Kumasi, in the Ashanti<br />
Region, Mr Abdul-Nashiru said<br />
sub-structures such as the RICCS<br />
and DICCS were operating under<br />
very dire conditions in their efforts<br />
to transform lives, despite<br />
the constant bashing they received<br />
from partners when results were<br />
not forth coming.<br />
“These are sub-structures that<br />
face a lot of frustrations in trying<br />
to push transformation of lives<br />
and yet we still bash them when<br />
• Mohammed Abdul-Nashiru, WAG Country Director<br />
we do not see results; they are not<br />
doing a great job, if you go down<br />
there and see the sacrifices they<br />
make, the risk they take, a good<br />
number of us there will not want<br />
to dare, we should commend<br />
them,” Mr Abdul-Nashiru<br />
stressed.<br />
“We have heard of natural<br />
leaders and traditional authorities<br />
and again we take things for<br />
granted, go down there and see<br />
those of them who are functioning<br />
and really moving from house<br />
to house, speaking to individuals,<br />
creating awareness in institutions,<br />
clinics, schools, within communities,<br />
also doing so at a certain risk<br />
and to some extent we expect<br />
them to do it for free, which they<br />
are; we really need to recognise<br />
their efforts and see how best we<br />
can support them to deliver better,”<br />
the WaterAid Ghana Country<br />
Director emphasised.<br />
The WAG Country Director<br />
implored sector actors to move<br />
away from the business as usual<br />
mindset as stakeholders take stock<br />
of five years of implementing the<br />
Rural Sanitation Model and Strategy<br />
and raise some of the tough<br />
questions in order to find answers<br />
to them to enhance the process of<br />
accelerating rural sanitation across<br />
the country.<br />
He said, for instance, it was<br />
critical for questions to be asked<br />
about the number of communities<br />
an institution had entered and<br />
how many of them were converted<br />
from open defecation to<br />
open defecation free, adding that<br />
most of the time partners shy<br />
away from these realities because<br />
the conversion rates were very bad<br />
and yet funds had been expended.<br />
He also advised WASH sector<br />
actors to implement good ideas<br />
they had conceived and convinced<br />
were likely to achieve results and<br />
begin to learn lessons from its implementation,<br />
instead of waiting<br />
to get a total assurance of its<br />
workability before rolling them<br />
out.<br />
Mr Abdul-Nashiru explained<br />
that WaterAid had been working<br />
for the past 20 years in some of<br />
the most deprived communities in<br />
Ghana and indicated WAG’s resolve<br />
to continue to learn from<br />
other partners to improve upon<br />
their activities’ implementation<br />
since it did not have all the answers<br />
to the challenges in the<br />
WASH sector.<br />
The 2017 National Basic Sanitation<br />
Forum was under the<br />
theme: “Five years of Rural Sanitation<br />
Model and Strategy (RSMS)<br />
implementation in Ghana, Learning<br />
for Scaling Up, Now and Beyond.”<br />
RCN Ghana is a network of<br />
institutional partners seeking to<br />
promote Knowledge Management<br />
in the Water, Sanitation and Hygiene<br />
(WASH) Sector in Ghana.<br />
The vision is a dynamic knowledge-driven<br />
WASH sector providing<br />
improved and sustainable<br />
pro-poor services.<br />
I don’t hate Akufo-Addo – Ken Agyepong<br />
BY KWAKU BAAH-ACHEAMFOUR<br />
OUTSPOKEN NEW Patriotic<br />
Party (NPP) Member of Parliament<br />
(MP) for the Assin Central<br />
constituency in the Central Region,<br />
Mr Kennedy Ohene Agyepong<br />
has defended his constant<br />
criticisms of the Akufo-Addo led<br />
administration.<br />
According to him, the criticisms<br />
are not ill-intended but to<br />
make sure the President and the<br />
NPP deliver on its mandate to<br />
Ghanaians.<br />
The controversial politician<br />
added that a lot of things are not<br />
in the right place in the 6-monthold<br />
government, and only criticisms<br />
will cause all government<br />
appointees to be conscious of<br />
their actions.<br />
Ghanaians, he said, would not<br />
renew the mandate of the NPP<br />
government come 2020 if the<br />
party fails to address their needs.<br />
He added that the NPP must<br />
stop playing to the whims and<br />
caprices of the opposition<br />
National Democratic Congress<br />
(NDC) as they are behind<br />
the challenges the<br />
government is facing including<br />
the BOST contaminated<br />
fuel saga.<br />
Mr Agyepong alleged that<br />
the Managing Director of the<br />
company is under attack because<br />
he kicked against selling the<br />
contaminated fuel to NDC functionaries<br />
at a cheaper price after<br />
opposition party members working<br />
at BOST had orchestrated the<br />
contamination.<br />
“The<br />
•Mr Kennedy Ohene Agyepong<br />
practice was that NDC intentionally<br />
caused the fuel they imported<br />
to be mixed with diesel by<br />
switching valves at the<br />
site and turn round to<br />
declare it contaminated<br />
thereby selling<br />
it to<br />
themselves at<br />
cheaper prices.<br />
“Between<br />
February 2015<br />
and February<br />
6, 2016, there<br />
were 49 transactions<br />
of contaminated<br />
fuel at<br />
BOST which NDC<br />
sold to themselves at<br />
cheap prices and because<br />
the new Managing Director<br />
stood his ground not to sell it to<br />
them at that ridiculous prices, the<br />
NDC guys set a trap for him and<br />
NPP is also falling for it blindly,”<br />
Mr Agyepong said at the party’s<br />
Central regional delegates conference<br />
at Assin Fosu.<br />
He also bemoaned the neglect<br />
of the people of the Central Region<br />
in terms of government appointments.<br />
According to him, none of the<br />
ambassadors recently appointed<br />
came from the Central Region<br />
which he said is not a good sign.<br />
Mr Agyepong called on the<br />
people of the region to rise up<br />
and fight for what is due them as<br />
they played a huge role in the victory<br />
of the NPP.
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