Yamoah Ponkoh Parries Another ‘Tweaa’ Heckle

The Ejisu Juabeng Municipal Chief Executive, Mr Kwaku Afrifa Yamoah Ponkoh, has parried a ‘tweaa’ taunt meant to disrupt, heckle and, probably land one in trouble.

The taunt was made when Mr Yamoah Ponkoh, in an address to a group of teachers, tried to explain how President John Mahama would fulfil his promise of building 200 hundred senior high schools (SHS) and make feasible the free SHS by 2016.’

But Mr Yamoah Ponkoh, probably with political maturity and hindsight of what had befallen his colleague, spent less than 15 seconds to respond to the loud ‘tweea’ coming from the audience at the Ejisu/Juabeng 2012/2013 Best Teacher awards ceremony at Ejisu.

“I have heard another ‘tweea’ from here but I will not respond, although the ‘tweaa’ expression has found a place in national discourse,” he said, and this drew some laughter from the crowd.

Mr Yamoah Ponkoh then went ahead with his speech.

In all, 30 teaching and non-teaching staff members were awarded for their dedication to duty in the ceremony organised by the municipal assembly and the Ghana Education Service (GES).

The Ahafo Ano South District Chief Executive (DCE), Mr Gabriel Barima, during a gathering of hospital employees, was heckled with the taunting expression ‘tweaa’. He became so much infuriated with the taunt that he abruptly ended his speech.

The video showing the DCE reacting to the ‘tweaa’ taunt went virile on the various social media. The government reacted to his behaviour, describing it as running contrary to provisions in the code of conduct for public officials launched last year.

Mr Barima was spared the rod initially and a statement from the Local Government Ministry said “the government has taken into account the DCE’s profuse apology and genuine show of remorse following the incident.” But in early March this year, Mr Barima was sacked following his comment in a radio interview that he had ‘popularised’ the ‘tweaa’, a comment which indicated that he had not regretted his action.