Free Press

The Free Press reports on an impending strike by the Association of Tanker Owners, which threatens to block the link between fuel suppliers and retailers by withdrawing their services from February 1, 1999.

Under a front-page headline, "Another energy crisis looms. Fuel Shortage ahead...as tanker owners threatened to withdraw services", the paper says the threat was contained in a letter from the Association to the Minister of Mines and Energy, dated January 14 and signed by the National Chairman, Ben Atsu Agomanyi.

The paper says should the threat be carried out, there would be an acute shortage of fuel which will result in price increase to worsen the situation of price hikes which is likely to be created by the introduction of VAT.

"Boakye Djan is coming home, with Capt. Baah Acheamfour and Major Mensah Poku to bury his father" is a second story on the front page of the Free Press. The story has it that the leader of the June 4 armed forces revolution, Major Boakye Djan, will be making a "triumphant entry" into his home land around February 20, 1999 after 18 years sojourn in London as a (P)NDC refugee.

The paper reports that accompanying the spokesman for the erstwhile Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) are two of his colleague members of the council, Major Poku and Capt. Acheamfuor. Major Djan's father. Nana Kofi Djan the first, chief of Abuokrom, a village in the Jaman District of the Brong Ahafo Region died early this month.

The retired major is billed to arrive home in time for his father's burial and funeral next month, the paper said.

The paper says the retired officers like most of the architects of the June 4 coup, which brought Rawlings to power, have also been plotted in the red books of the (P)NDC regime.

Previous projected arrivals of AFRC exiles had put the BNI and national security agencies on red alert, says the Free Press.