Features
When laws do not work …is there justification for abnegation of responsibility? (Part 1)
Two recent developments have given hope to the dream that someday officials of serious disposition would emerge on the public administration scene and change the narrative of non- enforcement of the law by those charged with responsibility to do just that.
Obviously, the two personalities who are men of the moment and who have introduced fresh breath into our work ethic are the Greater Accra Regional Minister, Mr. Henry Quartey and the Inspector-General of Police, Dr George Akuffo Dampare. Their brilliant achievements at the dawn of their tenure are matters of public record. When the Police recently held an engagement with stakeholders of faith- based organisations on the need to enforce the laws pertaining to their activities, it was taken as a step towards the consolidation of law and order in our society. In particular, the undertaking by the religious bodies to take steps to reduce their noisemaking was gratifying.
There is every reason to believe that the religious bodies will be held to their word and the constant reminder that six decades of independence have not engendered respect for the laws on noise disturbance and the desirability of observing the rights of others not to be disturbed. It is the expectation that since excessive noisemaking is not the preserve of religious groups, the Police will enforce the law offending laws to cover the activities of drink bars, open air night clubs, street- side preachers, announcers at transport hubs, disc jockeys, drug peddlers, unlicensed information centres and shop keepers.
Excessive noisemaking is so entrenched that some members of the public are sceptical about the existence of institutions which have been empowered to control the menace. While it is true that the Police, Local Assemblies and the Environmental Protection Agency have been characterised by inertia in the discharge of this responsibility, the people are steeped in a culture of noisemaking.
The situation is so hopeless that the Daily Graphic of February 15, 2019, had to concede that it is “one nuisance that has been ignored or downplayed by society for a very long time, and in view of that many Ghanaians have come to accept excessive noisemaking as a way of life.” We cannot accept the unhealthy development especially when the institutional leadership can be goaded by national leadership to get their personnel to do the work for which they are paid.
PUBLIC The work of the control agencies would be enhanced if members of the public, individually and collectively, learn to take responsibility and refrain from conduct that would generate undesirable and excessive noisemaking. We have to respect the boundaries of others and recognise the wrongness of our noisy forms of worshipping, clubbing, marketing, mourning and in wanting every neighbour to know that we own powerful radios and sound systems.
POLICE Police role in checking noise offence is set out in the Public Nuisance part of the Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29).Section 293 (1) of the Act empowers the police to arrest persons who operate facilities where people gather to play and dance to music without the written permission of the District Assembly. One could also be arrested for
assembling at such unauthorised places or for resisting orders to disperse from such places.
The Police can seize the musical equipment used at the venues pending eventual confiscation by the courts. The use of music to intentionally provoke, challenge, insult or annoy others violates section 295 and could result in arrests, prosecutions and fines. So would failure to heed warnings to desist from same.
It is an offence under section 296 (7) to ignore warnings and wilfully or wantonly make loud or unseemly noise by whatever means to annoy or disturb any person. It is important to remind the Police Administration of its November 18, 2004, GNA- reported pledge to enforce
this section and “hunt for and ensure the prosecution of individuals and corporate bodies that through their activities made excessive noises that were injurious to human health.” Hopefully, the time is ripe for redeeming the pledge. The enforcement of section 296 (8) which provides for the arrest and prosecution of any person who without the written permission of the
Local Assembly or Minister, plays music in public between eight in the evening and six in the morning would greatly reduce the incidence of noise disturbance.
It is the noisiest period in the country and it is doubtful if any Assembly would grant any such dispensation to a church or entertainment point.Police on night patrols should be able to visit any such premises and halt such activities if the supervisors cannot produce the required permit. Police power to deal with noise offence has been further enhanced by section 57 of the Public Health Act, 2012 (Act 851) which authorises the Police, the Public Health Officer, owner of premises or his agent to arrest with
out warrant, any person who violates section 54 of the Act by engaging in or encouraging others to engage in noisy business on any premises and which disturbs others. THE LOCAL ASSEMBLIES The Environmental Health and Sanitation Departments of the Assemblies have primary responsibility for enforcing the Public Health Act, 2012 (Act 851) and the relevant Bye-laws of the Assemblies. Noise offence under the Act is in two parts; Noxious or Noise Disturbance and Public Nuisance. Section 54 of the Act makes it an offence for anyone to engage in or permit any noisy business which adversely affects the health of people in the neighbourhood. On summary conviction, an offender is liable to pay a fine or be imprisoned for each day of further offending. Section 57 authorises the arrest without warrant of a noisy offender by a health officer, among others.
When the arrest is made by a health officer, the person arrested must be handed over to the Police for prosecution within 48 hours. In any District or public place, a person who is determined by the Environmental Protection Agency to have committed public nuisance by defying warnings and persistently making loud or unseemly noise to annoy or disturb anyone could be arrested and upon summary conviction, fined, imprisoned or made to serve both punishments.
Bye- laws which are uniform in large parts provide Assemblies further and more specific basis to control noise disturbance in the localities. For instance, section 1 of the Awutu Senya East Municipal Assembly (Abatement of Noise) Bye- laws, 2013 prohibits the sale of records or other recorded music without the approval of the Assembly. Conditions attached are to ensure the public is not disturbed by the activities of the dealer.
By William K. Asiedu
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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