250KV new generator capacity to power La General Hospital
Power outages at the La General Hospital will now be a thing of the past following the presentation of a 250KV Prime Power Generator donated by the Member of Parliament for La Dadekotopon, Nii Amasah Namoale.
The MP, who is also a Deputy Minister of Food and Agriculture in Charge of Fisheries, made the donation on Tuesday to save the hospital from the frequent difficulties it goes through in handling critical cases such as surgery and deliveries, whenever there was power outage.
Nii Namoale provided GH¢72,056.38 as the cost of 200KV of the generator while Global Power Energy, a locally based energy company that supplied the facility, bore the cost of the additional 50KV as its social responsibility to the hospital.
The capacity of the generator can power the whole hospital when there is a power outage.
The MP said the hospital old generator had always broken down and therefore felt the need for its replacement in order to save the lives of thousands of patients that visited the facility.
He said politicians were put in office to meet the needs of people in society. “If people are dying in our hospitals today because of electricity (power) then as politicians we should all bow down our heads in shame,” he said and asked why politicians should be in office when people who placed them there could not see improvement in their lives.
Having witnessed a power outage at the La General Hospital, the Chief Executive of the Accra metropolitan Assembly, Mr Alfred Vanderpuije, said he was glad that the electricity problem was now over and hoped the facility would be properly managed.
He said the proposal to supply the generator came to him from the MP and he willingly supported it, adding “I will never be a stumbling block to the Better Ghana Agenda.”
Mr Vanderpuije said conditions in the public health facilities in the metropolis needed to be improved to make the delivery of health care more accessible to Ghanaians.
Welcoming officials for the handling-over of the generator, Dr Juliana Ameh, a Specialist Pediatrician at the hospital, noted that La General Hospital’s chronic headache, which was unreliable power supply, had just been cured with the new facility.
“It has been a challenge in this hospital with our electricity condition, especially during operation,” she said and added that patients were in the wards and mothers had come to deliver whilst laboratory staff needed power to carry out quick tests.
Source: GNA
Ghana News Agency stands by its story “IEA slams NPP for abuse of incumbency”
The Editorial Conference, the highest authority on editorial matters in Ghana News Agency (GNA), stands by its story: “IEA slams NPP for abuse of incumbency in Election 2008” filed on Sunday, August 14, 2011.
The Conference came to this conclusion after thorough investigations it carried out established that the story was sourced from the official website of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).
It expressed shock and dismay that a reputable institution of IEA’s calibre could descend into the abyss and engage in a despicable act of removing a report it had posted on its official website since March 21, 2009 and denying its existence, when GNA started serialising it.
IEA stated in a press release on Monday, August 15, 2011; “Our attention has been drawn to an article published on the website of GNA, entitled ‘IEA slams NPP for abuse of incumbency in Elections 2008’. The IEA has neither authored such a publication nor conducted a survey or study to that effect. It is also totally false to say that the IEA has released any such non-existent findings. On Saturday 13th August 2011, our premises were indeed closed.”
Conference was at a loss as to where the IEA was coming from because the story said; “IEA stated in a document made available to the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Saturday”. It never said the report was made available to the Agency by the IEA.
It pointed out that news work depended on leads and prompts so when someone gave the IEA Report to one of the Agency’s Reporters and he/she cross-checked and found it on the IEA official website, he/she went ahead and used it.
Conference found the behaviour of IEA strange because earlier on Monday a representative of the Public Policy Institute called to complain about the story to the News Editor.
The News Editor painstakingly led her step by step to surf the official website of IEA until she saw the relevant material in a big document titled: “Report on the 2008 General Elections in Ghana”.
The News Editor assumed that the matter was closed, but alas, that was not to be. The IEA quickly removed the whole document from their official website and sent a press release denying the existence of the Report.
However, unknown to the IEA, the GNA had archived the document because it considered it as an important source material and was ready to share it with any of its subscribers if requested.
Conference said; “GNA wants to assure Ghanaians that it will continue to perform to the highest journalistic standards in order to continue to enjoy the high credibility rating it has among the populace.”
Source: GNA