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Aboadze VRA staff hold end-of-year thanksgiving service
Staff of the Volta River Authority (VRA) at the Aboadze Power enclave, on Monday, held their end -of- year thanksgiving service at the Calvary Methodist Church, Aboadze in the Shama District of the Western Region.
The event was to celebrate the favours God had showered on the authority in 2021.
With songs of praises from the Calvary Choir, an engineer, Felix Tetteh, led the congregation in a bidding prayer to praise God for the blessings, mercies and the grace throughout the year.
They prayed for God’s guidance for the board, management and staff and all public servants in the country in the coming year.
Dwelling on Colossians 7 :17 to deliver his sermon, the Superintendent Minister of the Abuesi Methodist Church, Very Rev. Andrew Bassaw, noted that Christians had been called upon to give thanks to God everyday.
Similarly, he believed that, it was appropriate for VRA to give thanks to God, stressing that “employees must give thanks to the pioneers who had the dream to establish VRA, one of Africa’s foremost power generators.”
“The 60 years celebration of VRA should have been celebrated nationwide for what the authority had done for the country, it should have been massive celebration. Akosombo was established long time ago, but VRA continues to sustain the system and also provides power for the country. “ Very Rev. Bassaw added.
In a statement, the Chief Executive Officer of VRA, Mr Emmanuel Antwi-Darkwa, said “Today is a special day in our life as a corporate institution. This is because today gives us a special reason to come together to express our appreciation to the Almighty God for His Goodness and Mercies.”
“Indeed, a heart without gratitude is a heart without remembrance. However, as Staff of VRA, we have made it a point to thank God always especially when the year draws to an end because we remember how far He has brought us.”
Mr Antwi -Darkwa explained that, “the thanksgiving had become a significant feature of our end of year activities hence the event taking place at all VRA’s work locations”.
As 2021 drew to a close, he urged the staff to reflect on a year that turned out to be different than anyone could imagine, noting that, despite global uncertainties, the sustainability plan had set VRA firmly on the road to be a public sector institution with a private sector mindset.
He continued:“I am confident that as we have done with other challenges, we shall surmount it.COVID-19 might have slowed us down and delayed some of our planned projects, however, it certainly could not stop us from being resilient, neither could it stop us from carrying out our obligations to our major stakeholders.”
He said “Let us, therefore, use this Christmas break as an opportunity to reflect on the challenges we encountered this year and return with a desire to do better. In particular, let us use our Sustainability Planas a guide in improving our operations. I urge each one of us to continue to contribute towards enhancing productivity and cost reduction.”
From Clement Adzei Boye, Aboadze
One of the issues we have been grappling with as a nation is corruption, and it has had such a devastating effect on our national development. I have been convinced that until morality becomes the foundation upon which our governance system is built, we can never go forward as a nation.
Our traditional practices, which have shaped our cultural beliefs, have always espoused values that have kept us along the straight and the narrow and have preserved our societies since ancient times.
These are values that frown on negative habits like stealing, cheating, greediness, selfishness, etc. Our grandparents have told us stories of societies where stealing was regarded as so shameful that offenders, when caught, have on a number of instances committed suicide.
In fact, my mother told me of a story where a man who was living in the same village as her mother (my grandmother), after having been caught stealing a neighbour’s cockerel, out of shame committed suicide on a mango tree. Those were the days that shameful acts were an abomination.
Tegare worship, a traditional spiritual worship during which the spirit possesses the Tegare Priest and begins to reveal secrets, was one of the means by which the society upheld African values in the days of my grandmother and the early childhood days of my mother.
Those were the days when the fear of being killed by Tegare prevented people from engaging in anti-social vices. These days, people sleeping with other people’s wives are not uncommon.
These wrongful behaviour was not countenanced at all by Tegare. One was likely going to lose his life on days that Tegare operates, and so unhealthy habits like coveting your neighbour’s wife was a taboo.
Stealing of other people’s farm produce, for instance, could mean certain death or incapacitation of the whole or part of the body in the full glare of everybody. People realised that there were consequences for wrongdoing, and this went a long way to motivate the society to adhere to right values.
Imagine a President being sworn into office and whoever administers the oath says, “Please say this after me: I, Mr. …., do solemnly swear by God, the spirits of my ancestors and the spirits ruling in Ghana, that should I engage in corrupt acts, may I and my family become crippled, may madness become entrenched in my family, may incurable sicknesses and diseases be my portion and that of my family, both immediate and extended.”
Can you imagine a situation where a few weeks afterwards the President goes to engage in corrupt acts and we hear of his sudden demise or incapacitation and confessing that he engaged in corrupt acts before passing or before the incapacitation—and the effect it will have on his successor? I believe we have to critically examine this option to curb corruption.
My grandmother gave me an eyewitness account of one such encounter where a woman died instantly after the Tegare Priest had revealed a wrong attitude she had displayed during the performance on one of the days scheduled for Tegare spirit manifestation.
According to her story, the Priest, after he had been possessed by the spirit, declared that for what the woman had done, he would not forgive her and that he would kill. Instantly, according to my grandmother, the lady fell down suddenly and she died—just like what happened to Ananias and his wife Sapphira in Acts Chapter 5.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
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