General News of Saturday, 10 August 2019

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

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The Finance Ministry has reportedly taken steps to unfreeze bank accounts of Power Distribution Service(PDS).

This comes after government announced the suspension of the concessionaire agreement with the consortium for thirty days last week.

Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah noted that a Ghanaian team of investigators is due to travel to Qatar to probe the issues further. He contradicted fellow Minister, Peter Amewu’s statement that the government, in its bid to avoid missing the deadline for the commencement of the concession agreement, converted the demand guarantee from a condition precedent to a condition subsequent.

But in a letter addressed to the PDS, ECG, Energy Commission and the Public Utility Regulatory Commission the Finance Ministry revealed plans to unfreeze the company’s bank accounts noting that the decision is to ensure that funds are available for payment of worker’s salaries and cater the operational costs of the company.

The Ministry further directed the Power Distribution Services (PDS) to provide ECG with a detailed revenue collection and expenditure report on a weekly basis.

Meanwhile ECG has hand over their operations back to PDS after both agreed on some modalities to ensure that there are no disruptions in power supply and service delivery.

But Deputy Information Minister, Pius Enam Hadidze says the Electricity Company of Ghana’s (ECG) decision to allow Power Distribution Services (PDS) to undertake all activities related to electricity retail sale does not nullify the suspension of the concession agreement.

On Tuesday, August 6, 2019, a team of forensic experts found the fourth remains, incidentally in the uncompleted building from where the prime suspect in the case of the three missing Takoradi girls was rearrested after his escape from lawful custody on December 30, 2018 at about 6.25 p.m.

Following that, there has been some suggestions that where the police exhumed the fourth skeleton used to be an old cemetery.

This discovery comes after the police discovered and exhumed some bodies at Kasawrodo in the Western region.

The bodies, which were found with signs suggesting massive abuses, were retrieved from a manhole on Friday, 2nd August 2019.

The families have finally agreed to assist the police to conduct forensic examination to determine the identities of the skeletons that were retrieved from a cesspit at Kansaworodo, a suburb of Sekondi/ Takoradi after initially refusing to.

There seems to be no end in sight for the attacks on journalists in the line of duty with the latest victim being a reporter from Daily Graphic.

Dela Russell was reportedly attacked by members of Prophet Emmanuel Badu Kobi’s church when she went to the Glorious Wave Church International at Sakumono to cover a demonstration against the pastor over some tribalistic statements he made.

Join host, Samson Lardy Anyenini and his able panelists as they delve into these and other issues that made headlines this week on JoyNews ‘NewsFile’.