New Ghana military detachment to be established in Cape Coast
As Parliament continue the debate to approve the Government financial policy statement for 2015, Defence Minister Dr Benjamin Kunbour has announced an initiative for the establishment of a military detachment in Cape Coast.
He said the move form part of series of actions to set up a military barracks in the Central Regional capital.
Dr Kunbuor defended the need for Ghana to begin to change the security architecture to respond effectively to new global security threats.
“The methods that we used yesterday cannot be used today,” he said, adding that the future thrust of the Government’s defence policy is that every region should have “at least the minimum of a military base.
According to him, it was in response to the changing threats that the Ghana Armed Forces (GAF) had established a new command in addition to the two which existed in the past.
“We used to have a Northern and Southern command. We now have a Northern, Southern and Central Command,” the Minister said.
Dr Kunbuor expressed concern over the taking of security issues for granted, and inferred that it is when security is lost that its real value is appreciated.
“It is when you have lost security like other countries have lost it that you know its value,” he stressed.
He referred to the construction of a military hospital in the Ashanti Region and said the project is moving at a fast pace.
Mr Kwaku Agyeman – Manu, Chairman of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament, turned the spotlight on the economy and sought to know from the Government what the one billion Euro bond raised recently by the government had been used for.
He challenged the Government to provide evidence to support the claim that it had used the money for infrastructure development.
Mr Agyeman – Manu, who is also Member of Parliament for Dormaa Central, said the Government had stated in the budget that it would pursue a transformational development agenda in 2015; however, there are no policies or programmes in the budget to ensure that the agenda is realised the one billion- Euro.
The 2015 budget, he said, would not achieve anything except make the economic situation of the Ghanaian worse.
The Member for Nkwanta North, Major Derrick Oduro (Rtd), drew the anger of the Speaker, Mr Edward Doe Adjaho, when he sought to dwell on problems confronting GAF, which were deemed not to be good for public consumption.
In the initial remarks, he said the GAF and other security agencies owed contractors huge amounts of money for the supply of food and medicals, and added that the contractors had threatened to take the matter to court.
Dr Kunbuor on a point of order cautioned against the security implications of putting such information in the public domain, and the Speaker called on the Member not to advance the argument.
Maj Oduro, however, wondered why anyone should feel uncomfortable with the statement he had made and sought to continue against the advice of the Speaker.
Mr Adjaho stopped him in his tracks and warned that he would “cut him off” if he did not change course.
Maj Oduro then turned his attention to issues bordering on the inability of the Ghana Navy to patrol the country’s territorial waters and the use of old equipment by the GAF on peacekeeping operations.
He said the situation had made it impossible for the country to access the United Nation’s Wet Lease programme.
Source: GNA