General News of Thursday, 6 November 2003
Source: GNA
Accra, Nov 6, GNA - Mr Emmanuel Antwi-Barima, a Witness at the National Reconciliation Commission (NRC), on Thursday prayed the Commission help him get a the money value, or the quantity of assorted drinks that were seized from him at Aflao Border Post after the December 31 1981 coup. He said the drinks were made up of 45 cartons of beer, 10 crates of Guinness, 15 crates of Coca-Cola and Fanta and five crates of canned malt.
"I also need my empty bottles," he said.
Mr Antwi-Barima, who said he then ran a drinking spot at Jasikan in the Volta Region, said although he paid the necessary duties on his drinks which he had brought from the Republic of Togo, one W. O. Ampofo, told him that his superior officer, one Captain Appiah needed the drinks to serve the military personnel at the border post on the day of the Revolution.
He said despite his insistence to have the drinks, Capt Appiah would not give them to him and to his shock two days he saw Capt Appiah in a revelry with some female students of Kadjebi Asatu Secondary School, serving them with some of the drinks.
A Graphic Artist, Mr Samuel Obuobisa Bampoe, who used to work with the Graphic Communications Group, another Witness, said he was dismissed from the company after the 1966 coup because he was a student of the Kwame Nkrumah Ideological Institute.
He said, even though, it was the Company that had sent him to the Institute to learn to become a cartoonists and his Editor in Chief, Mr Larweh Therson Cofie had asked him to do a story on the closure of the Institute after the coup, an armed soldier accompanied by a guard dog, handed his dismissal letter from the Personnel Department of the Company on February 28, 1966, the day the story of closure of the Institute was published.
Mr Bampoe said he worked for the Graphic Communication Group, formerly Graphic Corporation, for four years and although he contributed to then Provident Fund, he had not been paid his contributions to date. He prayed the Commission to help him have his contributions, and perhaps add complimentary copies of the Daily Graphic and the Mirror newspapers on regular basis.