Features
ECG, GWCL et al…
Mr Clifford-Braimah GWCL boss
I am uncomfortable writing about utilities in our country, not because they perform above average, but because no one listens when Ghanaian consumers complain. My understanding is that wherever there is a monopoly, consumer’s voices do not resonate.
One beautiful Saturday morning two and a half months ago about half a dozen young men came to my residence with meters, cables and tools claiming they were contracted by our almighty ECG to change my meter and that of my Landlord’s.
Of course, they were in ECG identifiable apparel, but I asked them why they would replace a perfectly working meter. They said they were acting on orders. I realized they were small fishes in the scheme of things, but I still had a few questions for them. I had over 350 cedis worth of credit on my meter; their response was that it would be credited on to the new meter.
We were to go to the ECG office the very next Monday to have our new status regularised and that they had a token credit of 30 cedis on the new meter. Fifty cedis should be paid on the Monday and the token 30 cedis would be deducted leaving a credit balance of 20 cedis.
On Monday I sent an emissary to the ECG offices at Dansoman with the fifty cedis. He returned with no receipt but with a message that I would receive a call after the regularization was completed. Two and a half months down the line I have not been called and my credit of over 350 cedis has not been restored.
Dear reader, please note that I am not alone in this dilemma. Almost all customers in my general area have a similar tale to narrate. I spoke to one official at Dansoman ECG who was quite concerned and tried to help but later reported a sluggish system. Up till today, the ECG has done nothing to fix this problem. Honestly, I feel deceived and robbed as do the other customers.
But for the benevolence of a press next door whose standby generator gives me power, I would have been in total darkness. Why a utility provider as ECG would treat its customers with such contempt beats my mind.
I watched a news item two week ago where officials of ECG were on a crusade dubbed, “Fix the bill, pay the bill” targeted at postpaid clients and all I did was laugh my head off. I can bet my bottom pesewa that this will amount to nothing.
An ECG that cannot fix issues with prepaid meters trying to fix postpaid ones? The ECG should cut through the chase.
Now, I was told to contact a vendor to purchase power without any assurance that I would get my ‘stolen’ credit back. I duly contacted the vendor who told me to send her my new meter’s details, which I did. After that she sent me a Momo number to make payment to. I paid up and got a printed receipt, but it took the whole day before the mechanism of this new purchase was explained to me.
How do I and other clients get our credits back? Mr. Boateng and his Public Relations Directorate have a duty to tell me and other customers what is going on. We need answers.
GWCL
Water, we are told is life. True as this saying is, water can also be the end of life, a lack of it, that is. I would not want to be in the shoes of those managing the Ghana Water Company Limited. Theirs is an arduous task, especially at a time that rains have come in torrents and breaching storage limits.
I wonder how the GWCL is able to turn the cyanide poisoned and Galamsey induced carnage of some water bodies into drinkable water. But these attacks on our water bodies is no excuse for the day-to-day erratic water supply to certain communities on a regular basis.
At times announcements are made after the taps have stopped flowing. When these technical issues arise, would it not be prudent to contract water tankers to the affected communities to sell water to the people? I think every utility provider should make provisions for situations likely to cause discomfort to their customers.
The days where state institutions pander to the whims and caprices of the political class must be put in the dustbin of history if this country is to move forward. Successive governments have only paid lip-service to the destructive activities of Galamsey and its operators.
The discourse on Galamsey is as murky as the colour of the rivers under siege. Our politicians are busy arguing about who had or has a better fight against the menace while farmlands get degraded, forest covers destroyed and people’s concern is how to make money.
The management of GWCL must be courageous to tell the powers that be in the face of how much destruction the nation’s water resources have been subjected to if they have not done so already. Those running our affairs must know the buck stops at their table and the responsibility is theirs to save us, else they have failed in their duty to the country.
NCA
As a journalist I have interest in how the media space performs. I read newspapers, I listen to radio and watch television on a daily basis. Personally, I rate social media as a junkyard where one has to be careful in navigating. Mind you, not everything you find on a refuse dump is trash.
I am told that it is the National Communication Authority (NCA) that has the power to grant licences for the operation of radio and television in Ghana. What I am not too sure of is whether, as done by our Electoral Commission that creates constituencies by population density, the NCA gives licences based on the same principle.
I have this concern because the NCA seems to give out licenses like confetti. Take the Greater Accra Region, for example: a Region that is only 3,245 square kilometers in total land space, there are over sixty frequency modulated (FM) radio stations. Can the NCA tell me what accounts for this? Not only that, some of the frequencies are so close that one can feel intrusion into some of the channels by others.
Does the NCA only consider what the prospective entrepreneur has to pay to them as application fee or these licenses are given on political patronage. Media organizations, not state-owned, subsist on advertising revenue. This also is predicated on the buoyancy of the economy. Does the NCA factor these in their decisions?
Does the NCA bother whether or not some of these media houses are struggling to remain afloat in the very tight advertising space, or once they give out the licenses, these stations are on their own? Let us not forget about television stations almost equal in number.
Whatever good intentions inform this mass pluralisation of radio and television, the numbers are staggering and have the potential to collapse the industry in the long run since other applications for license are in the queue.
We recall that Ghanaians have a sickening penchant for towing the line of doing what one person has done en masse. Remember the days of Soace-to-Space when everyone got a garden umbrella and a cellphone and was in business. This was after the phenomenon of Communication Centers. This is history now.
Where do we go from when media organisations begin to fold up? Meanwhile, our Ministry of Communication has introduced policies that stifle the growth of the operators, especially in the television subsector. In my estimation, proprietors of media houses have a bleak number of days going forward.
I will get to content and professionalism in a later episode.
Post Script: This column takes a very short break.
By Dr. Akofa K. Segbefia
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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