In its lead story, the Free Press says while the Serious Fraud Office (SFO) is accusing the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service (GES) of fraudulent deals in the award of contracts, the two institutions couner-accuse the SFO of witch-hunting. The paper says the SFO which is conducting investigations into alleged malpractices within the GES, is holding hostage the accounts books and other relevant documents of the Ministry of Education until the completion of the probe into alleged malpractices in the supply of books and award of contracts. Mr A. Tetteh Mensah, Assistant Director (Investigations) of the SFO, is reported as saying that officials at the Ministry of Education, for fear of exposure, are attempting to block investigations into their financial affairs. He held that the Ministry and the GES are behaving like “a mafia group trying to protect and cover up their own misdeeds”.
A second story on the front page of the Free Press captioned: “Women MPs cry against spate of female killings”, says the female Members of Parliament from both sides of the House, have condemned the recent spate of killings in Ghana. While some of them contended that women were being murdered for ritual purposes, people outside Parliament believe the murderers use the blood drawn from the victims to neutralise the scent of cocaine and heroin to avoid arrest during shipment of the narcotics. Mrs Comfort Owusu, NDC Member of Parliament for Mfantsiman East is reported as saying: “The national capital is really gripped in much fear and apprehension following the spate of killings in the past two weeks”., adding that all the murders followed the same pattern. Mrs Owusu, who is also Majority Deputy Chief Whip, therefore made an appeal to the Minister of the Interior to make every effort to bring the culprits to book.
