My journey through Graphic - Edmund Smith Asante writes (Part 7)

My journey through Graphic - Edmund Smith-Asante writes (Part 6)

Come my third month, which was November, one of the exciting news I was privileged to report on, were Ghana’s third and most recent experience of a solar eclipse which was partial (Previous ones which were both total, occurred in 1947 and 2006).

I also covered a mammoth Gospel crusade by German born international evangelist, Reinhard Bonnke, and proceedings at the Judgment Debt Commission involving a drill ship account.

Making the banner was the dismissal of then Deputy Minister of Communications, Victoria Hamah, by then President John Dramani Mahama, and the arrest of her driver over an alleged secret recording of a conversation with another woman, which culminated in the dismissal.

In all I had published 17 of my stories on political, governance, oil, gender, labour, education, sanitation and religious issues.

My fourth month, December, however saw me being assigned to cover events fewer times, and so I ended up having fewer stories (eight) published. Nonetheless I gleaned some hot and exciting stories that made the headlines and got a countrywide debate underway.

My stories from the Auditor General’s report which made the headlines were “Massive irregularities uncovered in public institutions” which incidentally shared space with Nelson Mandela’s funeral in the December 11, 2013 edition of the paper, “MDAs exceed 2012 budget by GH¢1.23bn” published on December 12, 2013 and “Irregularities in use of public funds… Ghana loses GH¢4.2 billion” which was the banner headline on Friday, December 13, 2013, the eve of my birthday.

But unlike now that the Daily Graphic goes on a break during the Christmas period and returns to the newsstands the following year in January, in my first year with the newspaper, we only broke for the Christmas and Boxing day holidays, but returned to the newsstands on December 27, which meant we had to work on the Boxing Day, and continued till our last edition of the year was published on Tuesday, December 31. 

2014

Then on Wednesday, January 1, in 2014 the newspaper was already on the newsstands, despite the fact that it was New Year’s Day which was observed as a public holiday. So the subsequent days we went full steam producing for the rest of the days in the week.

My story titled “Unauthorised mall at Tetteh Quarshie Interchange took the centre spread of the 48-page newspaper.

After the initial clearing of the traders selling all kinds of merchandise as a result of our story, that unauthorised shopping mall along the street has since been made legal by the La Dade-Kotopon Assembly (LaDMA), which was created out of the AMA on Thursday, July 25, 2013.

The road to and from Spintex and adjacent the Accra Mall, which was always choked with heavy traffic because of the sprawling market has since been turned into a one-way street towards the Tetteh Quarshie Interchange.

The next day, January 4, 2014, also saw an extensive article on children’s homes published, followed by the publication of a story on January 9, after coverage of President Mahama at the fourth Quadrennial and 51st Delegates Conference of the Ghana National Association of Teachers (GNAT).

Justifying the withdrawal of allowances for trainee teachers, the President said its replacement with the Students Loan Trust Scheme had increased intake to the colleges of education from 9,000 to 15,000 in just a year of its introduction.

But GNAT did not agree with the withdrawal and asked for a review of the policy, arguing that if trainee teachers went for loans to finance their education in the colleges of education they couldn’t be bonded by the Ghana Education Service (GES) after their graduation.

Also at the same conference current Vice-President, Prof. Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang, who was then the Minister of Education, stated that her ministry had declared 2014 a year of zero tolerance for teacher absenteeism, which formed the basis for another story published on January 11, that year.

Another interesting story I had the privilege of having published was a feature article on Ghana’s main hydroelectric dams titled “Bui and the tale of three hydro dams”. In all 10 stories of mine were published in the first month of the year.

February

Some of the impactful stories from my pen which were published in the second month of the year, were a story on Ghana Compact II under the Millennium Challenge Account, which made the banner titled “More power soon…

As Compact II takes off mid-year”, and a story on the arrival of the body of Ghanaian-born ace BBC broadcaster, Komla Dumor, who died in London on January 18, 2014.

In all 10 stories were once again published in a month and included my first story from Europe for the Daily Graphic. To be precise, the story was from Copenhagen, Denmark, where I was attending a Green Growth Study Tour with colleague journalist, Suleiman Mustapha (Graphic Business) and three other Ghanaian journalists; Ama Kudom-Agyeman (Freelance), Albert Oppong-Ansah (Ghana News Agency) and Francis Balikawu Npong (Rural Media Network).

To be continued