Features
Are we serious as a nation?
Infrastructure is a high priority for government, citizens and donors alike on account of its crucial role in achieving socio-economic development for the country. Unfinished infrastructural projects are a common sight in most part of the country and the situation is, indeed, disturbing.
It is highly frustrating and puzzling to see much needed infrastructure development projects abandoned mid-construction. In this country, research indicates that about one-third of projects started in previous regimes where never completed and that consumed about 20 per cent of all local government expenditure. Some of these abandoned projects which include, school buildings, hospitals and clinics, silos, warehouses, community centres, roads, pipe borne water among others, have been left at the mercy of the weather to rot.
This unfavourable situation can be attributed to local political actors not being able to agree on where projects should be sited and the inability to maintain consistent expenditure priorities which lead projects to be abandoned mid- construction.
PROPOSED DEMOLITION OF KATH MATERNITY BLOCK:
The unpalatable news about the proposed demolition of the 45-year-old maternity and baby unit building project at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi which was started in 1976 and was stalled in 1979 but later reactivated by the late former President Jerry John Rawlings is a good topic for discussion.
The structure, meant to accommodate 750-bed including lecture halls, restaurant, operation theatres among others, has been found to be too weak to accommodate all the equipment and the number of people expected to use the facility. Following a number of structural analysis conducted on the building, it has been recommended that it should be demolished for a new one to be built in its stead.
The project was handed over to the current contractors, Contracta UK Limited on May 15, 2020, by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo after he had cut the sod for the project to commence. The 155 million- euro project is to be financed from a Deutche Bank facility through the UK Export Finance. It was expected to be executed within 36 months. After a number of tests on the structural integrity of the building, it came out that the building had become too weak to accommodate the equipment and the anticipated human traffic and ,therefore, might not survive the test of time. The contractors proposed that the building should be pulled down for work to start afresh on the facility. Similar test conducted by the Ministry of Health also confirmed that the columns of the structure had become too old and weak while the concrete too had become brittle and the iron rods getting rusted.
SOCIAL COST OF PROJECT:
The social cost of the non- completion of the project is very high as money spent on this project alone would be enough to tackle other projects such as school buildings to accommodate a large number of students across the country. This fiscal waste may have long-term developmental consequences.
It is disheartening and mind-boggling when projects started with the hard-earned foreign exchange and meant to serve the interest of the larger society are abandoned midway due to negative and unforeseen circumstances. It is a fact that negative and incoherent politics practised by successive governments have contributed in no small way to some of these project failures and abandonment.
AWARD OF CONTRACT ON POLITICAL LINES:
Studies have also proved that contracts can be awarded to a contactor not because of a proven competence but on political lines. This normally leads to a shoddy work or inability to complete project due to ineptitude on the part of the contractor. The trend of a political party assuming incumbency only to focus on its own campaign promises, contributes to project failure and abandonment. It is also a fact that the nation lacks law enforcement and policies that check the government in power to continue and complete those uncompleted projects started by its predecessors. It is also a fact that the local people who happen to be the beneficiaries of these projects are not allowed to participate and develop interest in some of these projects.
This leads to alienation of the projects from the local beneficiaries since they are not allowed to partake and contribute their quota to the project and ,therefore, cannot monitor the stakeholders and the contactors working on the projects.
Most people assume that some of these unfinished projects are driven by corruption and are not finished because contractors give kickbacks to politicians or bureaucrats and then do not complete the work.
NATIONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN:
As being suggested in certain quarters, this country needs a national development plan devoid of partisan influence just like what persists in other developed nations to ensure that projects are not truncated when there is a change of government and leadership.
Countries that are making significant progress in their infrastructural developments are conscious of their developmental agenda by relying on continuity in projects started by previous administrations. This beautiful country called Ghana would have been paradise by now if our leaders approached development projects on the basis of continuity devoid of partisan interest and colorisation.
FINANCIAL LOSS TO THE STATE:
Indeed, the proposed demolition of the KATH maternity project will amount to a huge financial loss to the state which should have been avoided in the past.
Already, this country is saddled with a lot of financial problems which have greater effect on our economic progress, therefore, we do not want to burden ourselves with some of these financial losses which will deepen our woes.
By Charles Neequaye
Features
Tears of Ghanaman, home and abroad
The typical native of Sikaman is by nature a hospitable creature, a social animal with a big heart, a soul full of the milk of earthly goodness, and a spirit too loving for its own comfort.
Ghanaman hosts a foreign pal and he spends a fortune to make him very happy and comfortable-good food, clean booze, excellent accommodation and a woman for the night.
Sometimes the pal leaves without saying a “thank you but Ghanaman is not offended. He’d host another idiot even more splendidly. His nature is warm, his spirit benevolent. That is the typical Ghanaian and no wonder that many African-Americans say, “If you haven’t visited Ghana. Then you’ve not come to Africa.
You can even enter the country without a passport and a visa and you’ll be welcomed with a pot of palm wine.
If Ghanaman wants to go abroad, especially to an European country or the United States, it is often after an ordeal.
He has to doze in a queue at dawn at the embassy for days and if he is lucky to get through to being interviewed, he is confronted by someone who claims he or she has the power of discerning truth from lie.
In short Ghanaman must undergo a lie-detector test and has to answer questions that are either nonsensical or have no relevance to the trip at hand. When Joseph Kwame Korkorti wanted a visa to an European country, the attache studied Korkorti’s nose for a while and pronounced judgment.
“The way I see you, you won’t return to Ghana if I allow you to go. Korkorti nearly dislocated her jaw; Kwasiasem akwaakwa. In any case what had Korkorti’s nose got to do with the trip?
If Ghanaman, after several attempts, manages to get the visa and lands in the whiteman’s land, he is seen as another monkey uptown, a new arrival of a degenerate ape coming to invade civilized society. He is sneered at, mocked at and avoided like a plague. Some landlords abroad will not hire their rooms to blacks because they feel their presence in itself is bad business.
When a Sikaman publisher landed overseas and was riding in a public bus, an urchin who had the impudence and notoriety of a dead cockroach told his colleagues he was sure the black man had a tail which he was hiding in his pair of trousers. He didn’t end there. He said he was in fact going to pull out the tail for everyone to see.
True to his word he went and put his hand into the backside of the bewildered publisher, intent on grabbing his imaginary tail and pulling it out. It took a lot of patience on the part of the publisher to avert murder. He practically pinned the white miscreant on the floor by the neck and only let go when others intervene. Next time too…
The way we treat our foreign guests in comparison with the way they treat us is polar contrasting-two disparate extremes, one totally incomparable to the other. They hound us for immigration papers, deport us for overstaying and skinheads either target homes to perpetrate mayhem or attack black immigrants to gratify their racial madness
When these same people come here we accept them even more hospitably than our own kin. They enter without visas, overstay, impregnate our women and run away.
About half of foreigners in this country do not have valid resident permits and was not a bother until recently when fire was put under the buttocks of the Immigration Service
In fact, until recently I never knew Sikaman had an Immigration Service. The problem is that although their staff look resplendent in their green outfit, you never really see them anywhere. You’d think they are hidden from the public eye.
The first time I saw a group of them walking somewhere, I nearly mistook them for some sixth-form going to the library. Their ladies are pretty though.
So after all, Sikaman has an Immigration Service which I hear is now alert 24 hours a day tracking down illegal aliens and making sure they bound the exit via Kotoka International. A pat on their shoulder.
I am glad the Interior Ministry has also realised that the country has been too slack about who goes out or comes into Sikaman.
Now the Ministry has warned foreigners not to take the country’s commitment to its obligations under the various conditions as a sign of weakness or a source for the abuse of her hospitality.
“Ghana will not tolerate any such abuse,” Nii Okaija Adamafio, the Interior Minister said, baring his teeth and twitching his little moustache. He was inaugurating the Ghana Refugee and Immigration Service Boards.
He said some foreigners come in as tourists, investors, consultants, skilled workers or refugees. Others come as ‘charlatans, adventurers or plain criminals. “
Yes, there are many criminals among them. Our courts have tried a good number of them for fraud and misconduct.
It is time we welcome only those who would come and invest or tour and go back peacefully and not those whose criminal intentions are well-hidden but get exposed in due course of time.
This article was first published on Saturday March 14, 1998
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Features
Decisions have consequences
In this world, it is always important to recognise that every action or decision taken, has consequences.
It can result in something good or bad, depending on the quality of the decision, that is, the factors that were taken into account in the decision making.
The problem with a bad decision is that, in some instances, there is no opportunity to correct the result even though you have regretted the decision, which resulted in the unpleasant outcome.
This is what a friend of mine refers to as having regretted an unregretable regret. After church last Sunday, I was watching a programme on TV and a young lady was sharing with the host, how a bad decision she took, had affected her life immensely and adversely.
She narrated how she met a Caucasian and she got married to him. The white man arranged for her to join him after the marriage and processes were initiated for her to join her husband in UK. It took a while for the requisite documentation to be procured and during this period, she took a decision that has haunted her till date.
According to her narration, she met a man, a Ghanaian, who she started dating, even though she was a married woman.
After a while her documents were ready and so she left to join her husband abroad without breaking off the unholy relationship with the man from Ghana.
After she got to UK, this man from Ghana, kept pressuring her to leave the white man and return to him in Ghana. The white man at some point became a bit suspicious and asked about who she has been talking on the phone with for long spells, and she lied to him that it was her cousin.
Then comes the shocker. After the man from Ghana had sweet talked her continuously for a while, she decided to leave her husband and return to Ghana after only three weeks abroad.
She said, she asked the guy to swear to her that he would take care of both her and her mother and the guy swore to take good care of her and her mother as well as rent a 3-bedroom flat for her. She then took the decision to leave her husband and return to Ghana.
She told her mum that she was returning to Ghana to marry the guy in Ghana. According to her, her mother vigorously disagreed with her decision and wept.
She further added that her mum told her brother and they told her that they were going to tell her husband about her intentions.
According to her, she threatened that if they called her husband to inform him, then she would commit suicide, an idea given to her by the boyfriend in Ghana.
Her mum and brother afraid of what she might do, agreed not to tell her husband. She then told her husband that she was returning to Ghana to attend her Grandmother’s funeral.
The husband could not understand why she wanted to go back to Ghana after only three weeks stay so she had to lie that in their tradition, grandchildren are required to be present when the grandmother dies and is to be buried.
She returned to Ghana; the flat turns into a chamber and hall accommodation, the promise to take care of her mother does not materialise and generally she ends up furnishing the accommodation herself. All the promises given her by her boyfriend, turned out to be just mere words.
A phone the husband gave her, she left behind in UK out of guilty conscience knowing she was never coming back to UK.
Through that phone and social media, the husband found out about his boyfriend and that was the end of her marriage.
Meanwhile, things have gone awry here in Ghana and she had regretted and at a point in her narration, was trying desperately to hold back tears. Decisions indeed have consequences.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
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