SEPTEMBER 03

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Inside Sept 3 2018 .qxp_Layout 1 01/09/2018 5:47 PM Page 5 06 BY NANA BRAM OKAE II IHAVE been completely shocked ever since the scandal broke over the banks that have gone over the tip and have plunged the nation into a financial crisis. Lots and lots of tax payers’ money have gone into bailing some banks out, which in the end has come to naught, regrettably. Personalities I’m extremely worried also that personalities mentioned in the scandal are very highly educated people who should know by every stretch of the imagination that what they were doing was not in the best interest of their respective banks and the country at large. Pastor Mensa Otabil, one of the personalities mentioned in the scandal has come out to say that while he was board chairman at Capital Bank they took decisions some of which inured to the benefit of the bank and some of which did not but all the same they took those decisions with the best of intentions. How sad and how ridiculous! He is also saying that he was only a non-executive chairman and that he was not involved in the day-to-day activities of the bank; meaning, you can’t blame him for anything. Views DAILY Otabil sounds too simplistic over very serious financial issues Board chairman Well said, but that is not all for a board chairman. I’m sure by now he has been made to understand that as an ordinary board member you are liable when there is a problem in the company whose board you sit on. This is to say, all the Board members of Capital Bank at the time of the mess leading to the revocation of their licence, have a case to answer jointly and severally and this includes Pastor Mensa Otabil. The pastor had many Ghanaians’ blood pressure shoot up the other day when he went to church with his ‘my God is good’ mantra. What is this? When you and your colleagues have done something abominable to the good people of Ghana by squandering their money given you to sanitize your bank which was bleeding profusely, you go to church not to show remorse but to add insult to injury by proclaiming ‘my God is good’ to the disbelief of many citizens except your church members who see you as God and not as an ordinary mortal. God, by the way, is good to everybody not only to pastors. ‘My God is good’ It was on that same occasion that the pastor spoke of ‘interesting things happening’ involving him and that ‘my God is good.’ I should like to point out that nothing ‘interesting involving’ Pastor Otabil is happening. On •Pastor Mensa Otabil, the contrary, something shameful and scandalous involving him is happening and he must brace himself for the worst. So far, there has been no remorse shown by him over this matter which makes the issue of Woyome ‘baby case.’ Ghanaians will not sit down to allow Gh610 million to go waste because it involves Pastor Mensa Otabil and his colleagues. Education We need money to give education to our children at the secondary level free of charge; we need money to fix the numerous roads in the hinterland that become impassable at the least rain; we need money to continue building and equipping CHIPS compounds throughout the country because the health needs of the people are very important. It’s clear Pastor Otabil is treating the huge scandal facing him We need money to give education to our children at the secondary level free of charge; we need money to fix the numerous roads in the hinterland that become impassable at the least rain; we need money to continue building and equipping CHIPS compounds throughout the country because the health needs of the people are very important. HERITAGE MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 and his colleagues as a trivial case and looks not bothered at all per his demeanour because ‘my God is good.’ Eii! This is not a spiritual matter; this is money matter which belongs to the realm of the physical. The two must not be mixed to court undeserved sympathy from unsuspecting Christians. Already, we are seeing signs of that. Many of his church members are said to have stated boldly on social media that they stand by their founder at all times irrespective of what he is said to have done at Capital Bank when he was the chairman of the Board. Educated people But you see, there is a problem I have with highly educated people of this country-----that they have brought the country on its knees since the attainment of independence in 1957 through corruption. Every corruption scandal that has evolved in this country involves people who are highly educated and you wonder whether they went to university to learn the art of stealing from public purse. If you do the check list you will know----SADA was staffed with very, well educated people and yet they found a way of diverting huge sums of money into their private pockets and that was the end of SADA—the end of the great idea conceived to help the people of the north. Almost all the officials indicted for diversion and misuse of SADA funds went scot-free at the time except Mr. Gilbert Iddi who was removed as managing director. Those who took part in ‘sharing’ the funds remained at post for a little while and told to refund the moneys but it’s unclear whether they did the refund before the change of government in 2017. Many of those mentioned in this scandal included one Dr. Charles Jebuni who as chief technical director took a total of Ghc437, 206 in a period of 22 months; Mr. SalifuMahama who was hired as a consultant for housing engineering and was paid a total of Ghc96, 000 for 16 months; Mr. BakariSadiqNyari who was a consultant on Land and was paid a total of Ghc108, 000 for ten months; Mr. Kennedy Mohamed who bought a laptop computer for GHc6000 was a consultant on Resource Mobilization and collected a total of Ghc75, 000 for ten months. As I said above, it’s not clear whether they have refunded the monies to the state or not. My apologies to them if they have refunded monies belonging to the state. All of them are very highly educated personalities. NSS big men Then, somewhere in 2013, 2014 and 2015 top officials of the National Service Secretariat together with their boss developed a scheme and managed to steal millions of cedis into their private pockets and are now before the courts to answer criminal charges against them. GYEEDA Abuga Pele and Asibit, formerly of GYEEDA are now doing time at Nsawam prisons because of their crimes at GY- EEDA, two highly educated gentlemen. Auditor-General The Auditor-General also highlights malfeasance committed by various government officials who are all well educated every year in his report but to no effect. The PAC of Parliament only barks and leaves it at that. Perhaps, this is the reason why white-collar thievery has become the order of the day and people are indulging in it like it’s nobody’s business. I hope though that in this particular case of bank malfeasance, the government should be able to recover monies belonging to the state for us irrespective of personalities involved because it’s a huge sum of money we are talking about. I rest my case. If you do the check list you will know---- SADA was staffed with very, well educated people and yet they found a way of diverting huge sums of money into their private pockets and that was the end of SADA—the end of the great idea conceived to help the people of the north.
Inside Sept 3 2018 .qxp_Layout 1 01/09/2018 5:54 PM Page 6 How to prevent getting STDs and HIV THE ONLY way to avoid STDs is to not have vaginal, anal, or oral sex. If you are sexually active, you can do the following things to lower your chances of getting STDs and HIV. • Choose less risky sexual behaviours • Use condoms consistently and correctly • Reduce the number of people with whom you have sex • Limit or eliminate drug and alcohol use before and during sex; • Have an honest and open talk with your healthcare provider and ask whether you should be tested for STDs and HIV • Talk to your healthcare provider and find out if pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, is a good option for you to prevent HIV infection. WWW.DAILYHERITAGE.COM.GH DAILY HERITAGE MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2018 &Env. • Achieving zero hunger in Ghana An assessment of post-harvest losses and market linkages BY PROF RAMATU M. AL-HASSAN HUNGER IS a condition in which a person, for a sustained period, is unable to eat sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs in terms of both macro and micro nutrients (JAK Foundation, 2017); hunger is at the centre of malnutrition. Eight hundred and fifteen million people globally, do not get enough food to lead a normal, active life. Available estimates suggest that at least 2 million Ghanaians are undernourished. This situation needs to change according to the Sustainable Development Goal 2, which aims to end hunger by 2030. The World Food Programme in Ghana (WFP) commissioned the John Agyekum Kufuor Foundation to undertake a Zero Hunger Strategic Review (GZHSR) on behalf of the Government of Ghana, through the Ministry of Planning/National Development Planning Commission (NDPC). The objective of the GZHSR was to provide a baseline assessment of hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition, and the report aims to support a common understanding of the problems and how to solve them by 2030. The GZHSR report forms the basis of this review, which focuses on postharvest losses and weak market linkages as contributors to hunger and malnutrition. •Ghana loses about 318,514 tonnes of maize annually to post-harvest losses Ghana hunger situation According to the GZHSR report, despite achieving the MDG1 (halving poverty prevalence by 2015), hunger and malnutrition are still prevalent in the population and is characterised by a skewed spatial distribution with higher concentration in rural areas and northern Ghana. Extreme poverty is defined as those whose standard of living is insufficient to meet their basic nutritional requirements even if they devoted their entire consumption budget to food. Extreme poverty rate in rural areas was 15 percent, compared to 2 percent of the urban population. Furthermore, the three northern regions have an extreme poverty rate of 29.7 percent, almost three times the national average. The Volta Region also had a prevalence rate of 9 percent. The outcomes of undernourishment are stunting and being underweight (children being too thin for their age) and hidden hunger (a situation of micronutrient deficiency), for example, two-thirds of children under five years are anaemic. Causes The GZHSR report identifies limited access of farmers to reliable markets for their produce, and high postharvest losses as some of the contributory factors to extreme poverty and undernourishment. Therefore, addressing the above challenges is central to the attainment of SDG 2. Postharvest management and food losses Postharvest loss is defined as the degradation in both quantity (physical loss in quantity) and quality (nutrient composition, acceptability and edibility). As a developing country, postharvest losses are high in Ghana, especially at the farmer level. Estimates of postharvest losses vary according to the crop and method of estimation. What is clear is that the country loses quite a bit of agricultural produce to inappropriate management of harvested produce. Ghana loses over three hundred thousand tonnes of maize annually to postharvest losses. A review of studies on postharvest losses in Ghana recorded very high upper limits of losses suffered by farmers; as high as 26 percent for cassava, 50 percent for maize, 94 percent for cowpea (Vowotor et al., 2013). The losses are also very high for processed products (e.g. 20.9 - 72 percent for cassava chips and gari, and 36 percent for yam chips). A loss of 50 percent of maize produced is not just loss of food or potential earnings, but also of investment in the production of the commodity, further impoverishing the farmer and other actors in the value chain. The causes of losses are pests and diseases, poor storage and transportation practices that lead to bruising and physical damage including rotting. Agricultural produce in Ghana is not transported in fit-for-purpose vehicles such as cool vans for fresh produce (fruits, vegetables, fish and meats). Farmers and traders have poor or inadequate storage infrastructure, including drying and cleaning facilities. An inventory of commercial post-harvest infrastructure identified about 13000 warehouses, that have rather low levels of utilisation due to lack of trust in them by farmers. Some of the facilities need additional enhancements such as drying platforms, cold stores and trained warehouse managers. The Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana has advocated for challenges such as bad road infrastructure, inadequate machinery, extension services, and adoption of simple post-harvest technologies to be urgently addressed. For liquidity reasons, farmers may also be pressured to sell at low prices as there are no risk management instruments to fall on. Market linkages and food and nutrition security The GZHSR has identified low producer prices and inability of farmers to sell their produce as market access challenges for farmers. Most agricultural producers participate in informal physical or cash markets, in which exchange is face-to-face, and most importantly selling is seldom linked to a specific off-taker. As a result, the farmer does not hedge to offset negative price fluctuations in an environment of high production seasonality. The approach for linking smallholders to markets is participatory market development. In this approach, farmers are supported to identify market opportunities and to supply adequate quantities and quality on a regular and timely basis. Such support includes, helping farmers build their assets to produce what the market demands, providing them with information to take the right decisions, and continuous knowledge upgrading for them to stay competitive in the market. Availability of the right infrastructure, especially roads to physically link production areas to market centres is critical for enhancing market access. Reducing postharvest losses and linking farmers to markets requires partnership between government, especially at the local level, farmers, other private sector actors and civil society. The state provides needed public goods such infrastructure (including well designed and appropriately equipped markets), research, dissemination of knowledge and information, and enforcement of standards for marketing. In the special case of smallholders, smart subsidies such as matching grants may be used to help them acquire production assets, a strategy that has been used by agricultural development projects in this country. In fact the state can consider such subsidies as instruments of social protection. Farmers on their part, need to reorient themselves to invest in meeting the demands of the market including standards. The private sector can engage smallholders in inclusive market models for mutual benefit. Civil society can advocate for appropriate policies for the farmers plus engage with farmers at the local level to support the market development (e.g. building skills for price negotiations and sensitising farmers on contract relations). Conclusion Achieving zero hunger in a decade may seem a tall order, but it is possible if the right partnerships are forged at the local level and an inclusive market systems development approach is adopted.
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