According to him, most ongoing road projects had stalled due to failure of the previous administration to pay contractors for work done between two to five years.

[contextly_sidebar id=”aTkmr3O668BVkMwOdoSo4jreQUpWKgPH”]He said the ongoing disbursement will see most contractors return to site and speedily execute the road projects.

Mr. Amoako Atta disclosed this in Bolgatanga during a two-day working visit of President Nana Addo to the Upper East Region.

Mr. Amoako Atta, who could not come to terms with the deplorable state of road network in the country, quizzed the previous government on how loans procured to fix the road network in the country were expended.

He said contractors abandoned most road projects across the country because the previous government failed to pay them for work done, but the NPP government led by President Akufo Addo has commenced disbursement of over GHC1 billion to road contractors to enable them  resume work.

“Regrettably, we realized that, the total road network size of 72,000km of this country was in a deplorable state. Out of this, only 39 percent is considered motorable, but the rest is between fair and poor with greater proportion leaning towards poor, and you ask yourself, all the loans that we contracted where did the money go?”

“A lot of road projects were suspended because between two to five years, contractors in this country were not paid for even genuine jobs done. But I am happy to announce that, within a period of eight months, government has paid contractors a little over GHC1 billion and disbursements for both Government of Ghana (GoG) and Road Fund projects  are currently going on” he said.

Mr. Amoako Atta assured the people of Upper East Region that, government is committed to ensuring that the region received a face-lift in road infrastructure.

“The Upper East Region has a total road size of 4,200km, and greater proportion of it fair or poor, but government is tackling it, and you can see that all the contracts that were abandoned for some time, the contractors are back working because government has paid them.”

–

By: Frederick Awuni/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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According to him, the decision by the COCOBOD boss will cost Ghana more money.

[contextly_sidebar id=”ub3KtWaQqYp9ciUKq0HWYg7KFhVTpPh5″]Speaking on Eyewitness News on Monday, Mr. Agbodza said most of the roads were developing into very terrible state due to the decision to halt all construction works on them.

“The Chief Executive of COCOBOD has unilaterally stopped all cocoa roads and these roads are getting deteriorated and I can bet you, we will pay more for all those roads because some of these roads have been left for 7 months and they have deteriorated, and when they come back to the road they would have to fix that before they go on, meaning we will pay more…. Perhaps the Chief Executive of COCOBOD would have to be cited one day for willfully causing financial loss to the state,” he said.

The Chief Executive of COCOBOD, Joseph Boahen Aidoo in July 2017 announced the decision to halt construction when the Board and management of the company paid a courtesy call on the Okyehene, Osagyefo Amoatia Ofori Panyin.

He said the decision was to allow the company conduct a full audit into all road contracts to ensure that it does not strain its finances. He noted that the previous government had entered into various road contracts of values far above the company’s financial capacity.

“We are just suspending the project to make way for a comprehensive audit which will give us a clearer picture because we need to protect the public purse especially money coming from the sweat of modest cocoa farmers,” he said.

The Cocoa Roads Project aims at improving road networks in cocoa communities with the view to ensuring access to remote cocoa areas as well as creating a congenial environment to promote the livelihoods of cocoa farmers.

Among other things, it is to solve the challenges associated with carting cocoa beans from the farm gates to buying centers and also to improve the livelihoods of cocoa farmers.

–

By: Jonas Nyabor/citifmonline.com/Ghana

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The truce held for much of Saturday but shelling in Mariupol, which killed one woman, was followed by the Donetsk airport blasts early on Sunday.

The truce and 12-point peace roadmap was signed at talks involving Ukraine, Russia, separatist rebels and the OSCE.

Fighting in the east has left some 2,600 people dead since April.

On Sunday, Ukrainian security official Volodymyr Poliovyi said 864 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed since the conflict began.

Russia has repeatedly denied accusations by Ukraine and the West that it has been sending troops into Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions to help the rebels, who want to establish an independent state.

‘Weapons deal’

Before the ceasefire was agreed in Minsk, Belarus, on Friday, the separatists had been advancing on both Donetsk airport and Mariupol, a key city on the route to Crimea, which was annexed by Russia in March.

An OSCE team said that most of the firing in Donetsk hit targets outside the airport

At the scene: BBC’s Richard Galpin in Donetsk

We have just been at Donetsk airport which has in recent weeks been the focus of the fighting between Ukrainian forces and separatist rebels, with Ukrainian troops inside the main building there holding the airport.

We have heard a lot of mortars being fired, both into the airport area and outgoing as well. We also met an observer team from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE).

It said most of the firing was outgoing from the airport, ie from Ukrainian troops. It said the firing had caused some fires in villages nearby but stressed that, although a violation of the ceasefire, the fighting at Donetsk airport was not sufficient to actually make the ceasefire collapse.

The presidents of Ukraine and Russia both said on Saturday that the truce was largely holding.

However, late on Saturday, eyewitnesses said pro-Russian rebels had shelled and destroyed a government checkpoint on the eastern approaches to Mariupol – a major port on the Azov Sea.

Locals watch the scene of shelling in Donetsk on Sunday

A building in Mariupol witnesses said was hit overnight

Ukrainian army soldiers check the results of overnight shelling in Mariupol

Local officials said one 33-year-old woman civilian was killed and three people injured in the shelling.

One Ukrainian soldier told Reuters that government forces had pulled out tanks in line with the truce.

He said: “We only left lightly armed people to man checkpoints and these monsters violated every word of the agreement.”

However, separatist leader Andrei Purgin told Russia’s RIA news agency: “Despite the provocations of Ukrainian forces, the militias… will keep firmly to the Minsk agreement. The militias are not resorting and will not resort to arms.”

One Mariupol resident told Agence France-Presse: “I’m frightened. I want peace but I think this ceasefire is finished; this is the third night we haven’t been able to sleep.”

The BBC’s Fergal Keane in Mariupol reported renewed shelling there on Sunday. He says it lasted only a short time but the situation on the city’s eastern fringes remains tense, and there is little confidence the conflict has ended.

The BBC’s Richard Galpin reported fresh fighting on visiting Donetsk airport. It has been under the control of government troops since May but has been under constant rebel attack.

One rebel fighter told Reuters news agency: “Listen to the sound of the ceasefire. There’s a proper battle going on there.”

Meanwhile, Yuri Lutsenko, who advises Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, said a deal was struck at the Nato summit in Wales to supply Ukraine with “modern weapons from the US, France, Italy, Poland, Norway”.

Separately, a new report by Amnesty International accuses all sides in the conflict of committing war crimes.

The human rights group said civilians had accused Ukrainian government troops of shelling their neighbourhoods indiscriminately.

Witnesses also said that separatist fighters had “abducted, tortured, and killed their neighbours”. The report accused Russia of fuelling separatist crimes.

–

Source: BBC

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After speaking to Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko by phone, Putin said he believed Kiev and pro-Russian separatists could reach agreement at planned talks in Minsk on Friday.

“Our views on the way to resolve the conflict, as it seemed to me, are very close,” Putin told reporters during a visit to the Mongolian capital of Ulan Bator, describing the seven steps he had put forward to secure a resolution to the crisis.

They included separatists halting offensive operations, Ukrainian forces pulling back, an end to Ukrainian air strikes, the creation of humanitarian aid corridors, the rebuilding of damaged infrastructure and prisoner exchanges.

Poroshenko indicated the conversation with Putin had injected some momentum into efforts to end a conflict that has killed more than 2,600 people since April, saying he hoped the “peace process will finally begin” at Friday’s talks and that he and Putin had a “mutual understanding” on steps towards peace.

But Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk dismissed the plan as a “deception” on the eve of a NATO summit that will discuss Ukraine, adding in a harshly worded statement: “The real plan of Putin is to destroy Ukraine and to restore the Soviet Union.”

U.S. President Barack Obama also voiced caution, saying the conflict could end only if Russia stopped supplying the rebels with weapons and soldiers, a charge Moscow has denied.

Visiting the former Soviet republic of Estonia, now in NATO and the European Union, Obama said previous ceasefires had not worked “either because Russia has not been serious about it or it’s pretended that it’s not controlling the separatists”.

In a further sign of the West’s growing mistrust and disapproval of Moscow over its conduct in Ukraine, France said it would not go ahead with the planned delivery of the first of two Mistral helicopter carriers to Russia.

Moscow has said scrapping the 1.2 billion-euro ($1.7 billion) deal would harm France more than Russia and the Defence Ministry described the decision as “no tragedy”, but the move is likely to anger the Kremlin and underlines Russia’s growing isolation over events in Ukraine.

NEW SANCTIONS POSSIBLE

The EU, which has followed Washington in imposing limited economic sanctions on Russia, could agree new moves against Moscow on Friday, hitting the defense and finance sectors.

Indicating European leaders were not impressed by Putin’s new proposals, French President Francois Hollande’s office said he had reached his decision “despite the prospect of a ceasefire, which has yet to be confirmed and put in place”.

The ceasefire proposals had little immediate impact on the ground. Shelling of the rebel-held city of Donetsk continued and grey plumes of smoke poured up from the area that includes the city’s airport.

Rebel leaders said they had little faith that Ukrainian forces would observe any truce in a conflict that has left Russia’s relations with the West at their worst level since the end of the Cold War more than two decades ago.

“A ceasefire is always good but our main condition still stands – to withdraw Ukrainian troops from our territory. That’s the only reasonable way,” said Vladimir Antyufeyev, deputy prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic.

A truce would provide Poroshenko with some respite to revive a crumbling economy, battered by months of street protests against a president sympathetic to Moscow and then the violence that erupted after his ouster in February, followed by Russia’s annexation of Crimea and then prolonged fighting in the east.

A ceasefire may also be more welcome to Poroshenko now because his forces have suffered setbacks in the past week.

Putin is widely thought intent on ensuring Moscow at least continues to have influence in largely Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine after the conflict ends, though fears of a full-scale invasion by Russia remain in Kiev.

WAR GAMES

Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, sought to address concerns over the ceasefire proposals by saying they did not address the status of the rebel-held areas. Some rebels want unification with Russia, others want more independence inside Ukraine.

Peskov also denied a statement by Poroshenko’s office suggesting Putin had agreed a ceasefire. That would imply Moscow was a party to the conflict, and Kiev later amended the wording.

Despite Putin’s proposals, the Defence Ministry announced plans for huge military exercises this month by the strategic rocket forces responsible for its long-range nuclear weapons, involving 4,000 troops in south-central Russia.

Obama made clear NATO, which holds a summit in Wales on Thursday and Friday, would not be cowed.

“NATO must make concrete commitments to help Ukraine modernize and strengthen its security forces. We must do more to help other NATO partners, including Georgia and Moldova, strengthen their defenses as well,” he said in a speech in the Estonian capital, Tallinn.

–

Source: Reuters

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UN Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights Ivan Simonovic told the BBC that the crisis had worrying echoes of the 1990s war in his native Croatia.

Reports from eastern Ukraine say clashes between government forces and separatist militants have continued.

The separatists have not taken part in EU-brokered talks to defuse the crisis.

On Saturday, they appointed a prime minister for what they call the People’s Republic of Donetsk.

The man, Alexandr Borodai, said the self-proclaimed entity would apply to join Russia.

The separatists have taken control of government buildings across cities in south-eastern and southern Ukraine.

Violence between the two sides has left dozens of people dead in recent weeks.

A new Ukrainian president is due to be elected on 25 May.

Mr Simonovic told the BBC: “What I’m really afraid is that country is approaching to a point of no return if there is no adequate and urgent action taken.”

The UN says it has documented countless incidents of abduction, torture and murder in south and eastern Ukraine.

Deadlock

Although abuses have been committed on both sides, Mr Simonovic said, the majority were by the separatists.

He added that he hoped the planned presidential election could take place, but that it would be “extremely difficult”.

“I firmly believe that there is a window of opportunity that should be used,” he said, but added that it was closing.

The separatists have held referendums in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, and claimed to have won overwhelming popular backing. Both the Ukrainian government in Kiev and Western countries regard the votes as illegitimate.

The BBC’s Mark Lowen in Donetsk says both sides in the conflict are digging in.

The Ukrainian government refuses to talk to armed separatists and the self-proclaimed authorities say they will hold a dialogue until Kiev ends its “occupation” of the east.

The revolt in the east gained momentum after Russia annexed Ukraine’s mainly ethnic Russian region of Crimea in March.

Moscow acted after the overthrow of Ukraine’s elected pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych during unrest in the capital Kiev in February.

Source: BBC

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He told crowds marking the 1945 Soviet victory over the Nazis that Crimea had shown loyalty to a “historical truth” in choosing to be part of Russia.

The Kiev government protested at the visit, calling it a “gross violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty”.

Kiev also reported that more than 20 people had died in a security operation against separatists in Mariupol.

Ukrainian Interior Minister Arsen Avakov said that about 20 pro-Russian protesters and one Ukrainian security officer had been killed in the southern port.

Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists had clashed at the police HQ, which was set on fire.

Soviet ‘iron will’

In the Crimean port of Sevastopol, Mr Putin thanked the armed forces for their role in World War Two and hailed the incorporation of the peninsula into the Russian Federation.

He watched a fly-by of Russian aircraft and addressed seamen on naval vessels, as crowds gathered on cliffs overlooking the harbour.

He said: “I am sure that 2014 will go into the annals of our whole country as the year when the nations living here firmly decided to be together with Russia, affirming fidelity to the historical truth and the memory of our ancestors.”

The BBC’s Daniel Sandford in Sevastopol says Mr Putin was treated as a conquering hero as he walked through the main square and shook hands with Crimeans.

Mr Putin earlier addressed thousands during a huge, hour-long military parade in Moscow’s Red Square, vowing to defend the “motherland”.

He told the crowd that 9 May, known as Victory Day in Russia, was a “day of grief and eternal memory” and stressed how the “iron will of the Soviet people” had saved Europe from slavery.

“It is a holiday when an overwhelming force of patriotism triumphs, when all of us feel particularly acutely what it means to be loyal to the motherland and how important it is to defend its interests,” he said.

Nato’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said Mr Putin’s visit to Crimea was “inappropriate”, adding: “We consider the Russian annexation of Crimea to be illegal, illegitimate and we don’t recognise it.”

US National Security Council spokesperson Laura Magnuson said: “We do not accept Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea. Such a visit will only serve to fuel tensions.”

Ukraine’s interim authorities held subdued memorials to mark the Soviet victory.

A brief veterans’ ceremony was held in Kiev’s main park, in front of PM Arseniy Yatsenyuk and several former presidents.

The authorities feared pro-Russian activists would try to stoke violence if there were any higher profile celebrations.

Nazi Germany invaded the USSR – which included Ukraine – in June 1941 and advanced almost as far as Moscow before being driven back to Berlin.

Crimea was put under Ukrainian administration in 1954.

After the collapse of the USSR, Russia maintained a large military presence on the peninsula, and more than half of the region’s population identified themselves as ethnic Russian.

In the chaos that followed the ousting of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in February this year, Russian forces took over most of the peninsula.

Crimeans then held a referendum and voted to join Russia, though the vote was widely criticised as offering no real choice.

Pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions are to hold secession referendums on Sunday.

However, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency reported that the Kharkiv region would not now hold the referendum, as it could not agree a common wording.

Activists remain in control of many official buildings across the south and east despite a military operation by Kiev to remove them. Dozens have been killed in the unrest.

Source: BBC

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The military is parading more hardware than usual and the display, which marks the Soviet victory in World War Two, had a longer running time.

Unconfirmed reports say President Vladimir Putin may visit a parade in the Crimean port of Sevastopol later.

Festivities in Ukraine will be muted amid fears of provoking further violence in the south and east.

Moscow denies fomenting separatist unrest in Ukraine.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said it would be a “pity” if Mr Putin were to “use” the commemorations to visit Crimea.

The BBC’s Steve Rosenberg in Moscow says Russia has experienced a wave of patriotism following its annexation of the peninsula from Ukraine in March.

Mr Putin did not mention Ukraine in his speech, telling the crowd that the “iron will of the Soviet people” had saved Europe from slavery.

“It is a holiday when an overwhelming force of patriotism triumphs, when all of us feel particularly acutely what it means to be loyal to the Motherland and how important it is to defend its interests,” he said.

The parade in Moscow traditionally features a display of military hardware and a show of patriotic fervour on Red Square.

The scope of this year’s event was bigger than usual:

• The parade lasted 59 minutes, compared with its usual 45 minute running time
• Fifty more military vehicles were on display compared with last year
• The Sevastopol-based Black Sea Fleet played a larger role

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s interim authorities have discouraged public gatherings amid fears that pro-Russian activists might try to stoke violence.

“Roadblocks have been set up around our capital, where serious checks are being carried out, because we expect that provocative actions may occur on May 9,” said Ukraine’s acting President Olexander Turchynov.

A low-key wreath-laying ceremony is planned in Kiev.

Nazi Germany invaded the USSR – which included Ukraine – in June 1941 and advanced almost as far as Moscow before being driven back to Berlin in some of the fiercest fighting of the war.

Russia estimates that 26.6 million Soviet citizens were killed in the war, about 8.7 million of them members of the armed forces.

Referendums

Pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine say they will go ahead with independence referendums on Sunday, despite a call from President Putin to postpone them.

The decision was announced by separatist leaders in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk on Thursday.

Activists remain in control of many official buildings across the south and east despite a military operation by Kiev to remove them. Dozens of people have been killed in the unrest.

Moscow insists it has a right to protect Ukraine’s Russian-speaking population against what it calls an undemocratic government in Kiev. However, Mr Putin had called for the referendums on autonomy to be postponed to create the conditions for dialogue.

Mr Putin also said he was removing troops massed along Russia’s border with Ukraine, but Nato says it has seen no sign of a withdrawal.

Ukraine is preparing for elections on 25 May following the ousting of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in February by pro-Western protesters.

Source: BBC

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