THE GHANAIAN CHRONICLE

A screaming headline on the front page of the Chronicle says: "Minister alarmed at 20 billion-cedi hike in project cost...200 per cent increase halts State House renovation". The accompanying story says documents sighted by the Ghanaian Chronicle at the Ministy of Finance have revealed that the cost of renovating the State House, otherwise referred to as "Job 600", has gone up by over 300 per cent. The original contract sum of 10 billion cedis is now pegged at over 30 billion cedis. The Chronicle says sources close to the Minister of Works and Housing, Mr Isaac Adjei-Mensah, told the paper that the Minister had expressed concern about the hiked price of the contract and he was said to have raised it during a meeting with the Parliamentary Committee on Works and Housing some few days after he had assumed duty. The paper says as a result of the hike in the cost, work on the building has come to a halt, adding that the project which is in three phases, is still in phase one, four years after the major contractor - China State Engineering Construction Corporation had cut the sod for work to begin. GRI

In another front page story, the Chronicle says Parliament, last Wednesday, echoed with allegations of police and military involvement in the smuggling of boards and beams from the regions for sale in Accra. The paper says the MPs, who, listened with a degree of incredulity, shook their heads in despair at the revelation that those paid to check wrong-doing, were themselves neck-deep in corruption. According to the Chronicle, the MP for Akim Oda, Mr Yaw Osafo Maafo made the allegation in his contribution to a statement on the havoc that chain-saw operators were wreaking on the country's forests through illegal tree felling. GRI

The Chronicle says in an inside page story that in pursuance of Rawliings' "philosophy of democratisation of violence" which unfortunately enthroned a culture of violence in the body politic, District Chief Executives are still being taught to handle sophisticated weapons posing a high risk to the lives of innocent Ghanaians. The paper recalls that some four months ago, the DCE for East Akim allegedly shot and killed two people at a funeral at Adawase, near Anyinam in the Eastern Region. According to the Chronicle, a week ago, the DCE for Komenda- Edina-Eguafo-Abirem, Thomas Ankomah, recklessly handled an AK 47 assault rifle killing three giant-sized turkeys of a neighbour. "If the turkeys had been human beings, they would have lost their lives", the Chronicle quoted the owner of the turkeys as saying. The turkeys, the paper says, were feeding in a poultry farm close to the residence of the DCE when all of a sudden the stray bullets from the AK 47 killed them instantly. GRI