Broadcasting the breaking news from my office

By George Sydney Abugri

This is the newly launched General Telegraph Broadcasting Service {GTBC}. The time is what your watch says it is. Here is the bor¬ing news without any headlines and served in the manner of rice, beans, gari, fried pepper, fish and a few pebbles and read by A. A. Ananse Jnr.

The Reverend R. Z. K. Adongo Boateng, head of the Church of Moses, has told Christians that the way to heaven is much narrower than a shepherd’s footpath through a thorny hush.

Preaching a sermon at Solomon’s Community Chapel at Zongo at the weekend, the Reverend Boat told Christians that while regular church at¬tendance is most desirable and recommended for all Christians because of the immense spiritual benefits of group worship, church attendance is far from a guarantee of salvation unless backed by a total life-long commitment to and communion with Christ.

A prominent local politician has asked Ghanaians to be vigilant in the defence of their fundamental human rights and freedoms but added that the exercise of such rights and freedoms have their constitutional limit.

If apart from being stone broke I have just had a heated quarrel with my in-laws and I am seated quietly in a corner trying to calm down and sort things out, and you come along and stick your face a millimeter form mine and start grinning like a drunken baboon and I punch your nose, you will have no justification to complain that I have in¬fringed upon your right of freedom of facial expression", Mr Kingsley Yeboah told a symposium on hu¬man rights at Koforidua today.

A Ghanaian environ¬mental scientist has told environmentalists in the country that they will be confronted by an enormous beast of an environmental problem when Ghana gets eventually saddled with a massive amount of scrap metal because of the present importation of sec¬ond hand refrigerators, cars, motor parts, bicycles and motor cycles on a dis¬turbing scale.

Speaking to the envi¬ronmental correspondent of GTBS in a very highly exclusive in¬terview in a dingy "akpeteshi" bar at Sukura near Accra yesterday, the scientist Dr K.K. Asemsuro said Ghana will soon he bur¬dened with a mountainous heap of scrap higher than Mount Adfajato.

Dr Asemsuro drew at¬tention to the large number of imported second hand refrigerators and cars on the streets and the car engines and other bulky auto mobile parts which litter. Abossey Okai and asked where the eventual scrap will go.

"The developed world having nowhere to dump all this scrap as they con¬tinue to produce more motor vehicles and refrigerators, have hit upon the idea of dumping them on us. The question is where are we going to dump them in due course?" Dr Asemsuro asked. This bulle¬tin of news is coming to you live from GTBS.

A 59-year old public servant has called on the government to take a second and more critical look at the Social Security Scheme with a view to introducing possible innovations which could make the scheme more beneficial to working people.

“It is virtually impossible for the average public servant to save enough money during his working life to build a house. And in a country where the average lifespan hovers around 50, it is unfair to ask working people to wait until they retire from active service at 60 before they start looking around for cement and roofing sheets to build houses” Mr Sofo Agbanaways told GTBS yesterday, pulling up his trouser waist band which was already way up near his chest anyway.

He suggested that workers who contribute to the scheme for at least 20 years be eligible to draw at least 25 per cent of their total contributions to start housing projects.

A regular motorist on the Kaneshie-Odorkor Motorway has asked those who planned the construction of the Kaneshie Mar¬ket Complex whether they did so over a bucketful of Cambodian schnapps laced with akpeteshie from Kumasi Bantama or what.

It is unbelievable, Kofigah alias Azaaman told GTBS at the mar¬ket today, that a modern market of that size, located in the heart of the nation's capital, is without a car park worth the name!

In the event, he noted, a stretch of the Kaneshie-Odorkor motorway has been turned into a car park right under the very noses of the traffic cops and there was nothing the police could do about it. The motorist it turned out, was quite right: GTBS’s construction correspon¬dent Peter Adongo later found out that at least two lanes on each side of the dual carriage motorway have been turned into a car park.

Motor vehicles driving past the market constantly stand the risk of running into parked vehicles. Parked vehicles also impede the safe movement of pe¬destrians, added Adongo who pointed out the need for traffic lights at the mar¬ket as a matter of urgency.

Three journalists from some unidentified media houses today held a press conference in Accra to bemoan the generally poor service conditions of practitioners of the profession in Ghana. The journalists arrived at the press conference wearing scary masks and brandishing crumples staff pay slips.

They said if within a month their employers do not announce a welfare package commensurate with the risks and pres¬sures of the profession, they would advise themselves on the next course of ac¬tion to take.

The journalists noted that there had been con¬siderable improvements in the service conditions of other professionals in re¬cent times and pointed out that what is good for the gander is just as splendid for the starving goose.

The masked journalists all looked bow-legged as they later shuffled out of the conference room but on closer observation, it became clear that the soles of their shoes were uneven. Too much walking had eaten off the outer edge of the soles so that they all looked bow-legged as they walked along!

That brings the blinds and curtains down on today’s broadcast, folks. Make sure you tune in to GTBS news at 6.am sharp tomorrow for another skull-blowing bulletin!

Website: www.sydneyabugri.com/Web