After days of embarrassing revelations of questionable expenditure by members of the British House of Commons, the Speaker, Michael Martin, has tendered in his resignation.
Mr Martin came under severe criticism for being an obstacle to reforms of the expenses system. His resignation came after a group of MPs set in motion an agenda to oust him through a no-confidence motion, a situation that could have made him the first Speaker in 300 years to suffer such a fate.
Members of the British public were shocked to hear how their representatives in the House of Commons went into extravagant and sometimes frivolous expenditures on anything, from buildings to lawn mowers, which imposed on the taxpayer unnecessary financial burden.
Public response was quite straightforward — outrage — at what they considered to be irresponsible behaviour on the part of men and women who pledged to serve their interests when they were campaigning for office.
Over there, people did not run into the embracing arms of political parties or the media for support and sympathy. In fact, it was the media which raised the alarm and the parties were the first to denounce those acts of indiscretion.
The leader of the Conservative Party, Mr David Cameron, for instance, did not hesitate to demand that those members of his party who were found to have indulged in those acts to make refunds or face sanctions.
Since the changeover from the Kufuor to the Mills administration, we have had and continue to have several cases of public officers being asked to render one form of account or another for their past stewardship.
There were several cases of some officials of the previous government going home with vehicles which officially did not belong to them. Some have been accused of paying ridiculously low prices for their official vehicles, some of which do not even qualify to be sold. There were also cases of previous occupants of government bungalows having looted the places or abandoned them in a manner that could not be described as the best.
It is true that in their attempt to retrieve state vehicles or regain custody of official bungalows, some agents of the new administration made some false moves which should not be overlooked.
But by and large, the issues revolve around individuals and not political parties or the previous government as a body. It is, therefore, important that Ghanaians begin to see things the same way as the British public so that individual public officials do not cover their own excesses by evoking the sympathy of the previous administration or any political party.
Suddenly, certain words are being bandied about in a manner that does not contribute to the public good. It is now fashionable for some public officers to be screaming hoarse for ill-treatment after, in their own estimation, making so much sacrifice to serve the nation.
Public service in any form entails some amount of sacrifice, but at what cost to the state? Shall we ask whether it is fair for a minister of state who, with all the niceties and privileges attached to his position, evoke this sacrificial theory simply because he had been asked to return a vehicle belonging to the state? Or is it a sign of ingratitude to question the propriety of a government official who, after buying a state property very cheaply, resells it for huge profit?
Shall we say that argument also holds for a former head of state who will decide to go home with a fleet of customised state vehicles because he had been given the opportunity to serve the nation in that prestigious capacity? Is that why people do not see anything wrong with a high office holder such as the Speaker of Parliament stripping bare his official bungalow because he had served the nation in that capacity?
We may ask further, why are the so-called sacrifices made to warrant such rewards from the state when others making even bigger sacrifices are ignored? Is it because they forfeited their salaries and other entitlements while in office?
Is it because the positions were imposed on them because they were the only persons capable of acting in that capacity? In short, one may want to know what were the sufferings, pains and other deprivations they had to endure for serving in their respective positions.
Can we think of the sacrifices of other public servants that continue to sustain the progress and development of this nation? Think about the sacrifices of teachers who mould raw brains into sophisticated human resources with very little remuneration.
What about the men and officers of the Police Service who work around the clock to provide us with security, sometimes at the risk of their own lives. What of hospital workers whose complaints of poor service conditions have become a permanent feature on the labour front?
Should they also commandeer all hospital equipment and vehicles when proceeding on retirement? So why should those who obviously made gains while in their privileged positions hold the nation to ransom because they have to account for their stewardship?
Closely related to this is the complaint of witch-hunting. It is as if all our political and public office holders are angels so any attempt to check malfeasance amounts to witch-hunting. Politics has become a lucrative enterprise and only a few can claim becoming worse off after assuming political office.
Take the number of friends and relatives who accompany nominees to the vetting sessions. Look at the agitation, manoeuvres and intense lobbying associated with the quest for ministerial and other appointments. So why should some sound as if they were led to the altar like the meek lamb and sacrificed so that the rest of us shall be saved?
Our democracy cannot grow if our public office holders are not held accountable for their actions. Victimisation cannot be ruled out in some cases, we agree, but it is better to treat cases on their individual merits than putting everything into one basket and labelling it political vindictiveness or witch-hunting.
Since the vehicle-snatching episode gained media attention, the names of some prominent personalities in the previous administration have not surfaced anywhere. That tells a story. It means individuals should be answerable for their actions.
It also means that some people have conducted themselves very well and left public office with their dignity intact. Those who failed to meet those standards should not try to court public sympathy with claims of harassment or witch-hunting.
Everywhere, from Britain to Australia, the citizenry are becoming more and more critical of the conduct of their political leaders, especially where the use of public funds is concerned. We cannot claim indifference to this new wind of public awareness, more so, when our economy cannot absorb frivolous spending and extravagance in high places.
As for sacrifice, no one claims to be doing it better than the millions of Ghanaians whose take-home pay cannot afford them even a single decent meal a day and whose children cannot afford the luxury of a good classroom for their studies. Those who have had more than enough should tone down their noises, otherwise it will become obvious that their claim to serve was to exploit those who voted them into office.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, May 26, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
TEMA IS DECAYING SLOWLY (MAY 19, 2009)
TEMA is the crystallisation of one of the dreams of Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, the nation’s First President, to transform a small fishing village into one of the busiest industrial and port cities on the continent.
To set in motion this ambitious project, the state acquired large tracts of land mostly from the chiefs and people of Nungua Traditional Area, which were to be developed into industrial, commercial and residential estates.
The new Tema Township was, therefore, demarcated into well-planned residential communities with their unique features and facilities such as schools, markets, police stations, recreational and shopping facilities, essentially with the objective of making the city neat, beautiful and accessible.
With the completion of Tema Harbour in 1962 and the Volta Dam at Akosombo becoming operational in 1963, Tema started to take shape, giving hope to a newly-independent African nation that was determined to make its mark on the international scene.
Major industrial establishments, including the Volta Aluminum Company (VALCO), which came as a package with the construction of the dam, started to spring up.
To facilitate movement between the emerging industrial and port city of Tema and the national capital of Accra, our first President thought of an expressway which became the Accra-Tema Motorway, a project that was vehemently resisted by some politicians at the time, because they thought it was more of grandiose than a necessity in nature.
Tema, with its well-developed roads, industrial, commercial and residential estates, became the pride of the nation. It became the destination of young school leavers who sought a living at the sprawling main harbour, the adjoining fishing harbour and the numerous factories the city could boast of.
Those were the days Tema was vibrating with activity throughout the day and night, with big buses of the various companies ferrying their workers to and from work on their shifts.
You could see the buses belonging to VALCO, Tema Shipyard and Drydock Corporation, Ghana Textiles and Printing (GTP), Ghana Textiles Manufacturing Company (GTMC), Tema Steel Works, Sanyo Electronics, Akasanoma Electronics, Tema Food Complex Company (TFCC) and of course the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority and many others on the streets of Tema moving in all directions for 24 hours.
These were vibrant companies that provided thousands of Ghanaian workers and their dependents with livelihood. Ghana was really heading towards industrialisation. Forty-seven years after coming into existence, Tema should have matured by now and blossomed into a major industrial centre comparable to similar cities in other parts of the world. But that was not to be. Decay set in and Tema started to lose its glory.
The textile industry collapsed, thanks to an overzealous implementation of a trade liberalisation policy and with that, the collapse of GTP, GTMC and the rest.
A cruel divestiture policy witnessed the state losing interest in many of its major enterprises including the Ghana Steel Works, the Tema Food Complex Corporation, the Tema Shipyard and Drydock Corporation and the Tema Cold Stores Company.
Some of these companies have collapsed entirely, while others are struggling for survival in private hands.
You do not need to enter Tema before coming face-to-face with its decay and past glory. When coming from the direction of Nungua, using the beach road, one could sense the gloom of Tema. The road does not give any indication that one was entering the nation’s biggest industrial and seaport city. I doubt if the situation will be the same in other major port cities like Manchester, Liverpool, Rotterdam or Hamburg, to name a few.
No matter how poor we claim to be as a country that beach road leading to the harbour should have been developed into a dual-carriageway, well-asphalted, to give meaning to our boast that we are the gate-way to the West Africa sub-region.
Driving on that stretch of road in the night can be a nightmare and there had been reports of armed robberies and car snatches on several occasions. Incidentally, along this road is the multi-million dollar Cocobod warehouse complex, which is to serve as a transit point for cocoa brought from the hinterland before shipment to foreign lands.
The Accra-Tema Motorway, which was not only criticised but condemned in the past, has remained the main artery linking the port city to Accra and any mishap on that route, such as accident, means Accra is cut off from its junior sister.
Tema looks like an orphaned city even though two state institutions — the Tema Development Corporation (TDC) and the Tema Municipal Authority (TMA) — are competing for the revenues it can bring into their coffers.
The TDC sells Tema lands, while the TMA collects the market tolls and property rates and others. Some officials of the two state institutions are far better off than Tema itself. While the two institutions know where to make their monies, none could worry about its state of roads and other infrastructure.
For its strategic national importance and for its small size, Tema roads are some of the worst in the country and constitute a big blot on our values as a nation. How come that a city that brings so much to the country in terms of revenue, a city where most of our exports and imports are channeled through be so neglected. Those who do not know may visit Tema one of these days, especially after a heavy downpour.
It is an undeniable fact that TDC lands had benefited some of its officials more than the city and the original landowners of Nungua Traditional Area. That was why the Nungua people started to agitate for the return of their lands when they realised that those at TDC were only interested in selling the lands for personal profit instead of the projects they were originally acquired for.
Dr Nkrumah, according to reports, felt nostalgic about Tema, while in exile in Conakry, in the Republic of Guinea after his overthrow, because he could see a dream fading away. Tema had never reached its full bloom before the gloom set in.
Tema has become a fragmented city with most of its settlements or communities having nothing in common with one another. There are no road networks connecting these settlements. Take communities 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20. They are supposed to be part of Tema.
However, residents of these communities have to force their way onto the motorway through unapproved routes or use the circuitous beach road before reaching Tema city centre. A road over the Sakumo Lagoon to link main Tema and the Sakumono area and another linking Community 11 to the Klagon and the Sakumono areas have remained on the drawing board.
Could it be that Tema’s problems are partly because there is no clear definition of the roles of the TDC and TMA? Then one must go, and TDC, having finished selling the lands has exhausted its stay. Be as it may, the Tema story cannot be isolated from the decay that has engulfed this nation of ours. It is our wish that the change will reflect in the fortunes of our once proud port city of Tema, which is lying right on the Greenwich Meridian. Remember the once famous Meridian Hotel?
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
To set in motion this ambitious project, the state acquired large tracts of land mostly from the chiefs and people of Nungua Traditional Area, which were to be developed into industrial, commercial and residential estates.
The new Tema Township was, therefore, demarcated into well-planned residential communities with their unique features and facilities such as schools, markets, police stations, recreational and shopping facilities, essentially with the objective of making the city neat, beautiful and accessible.
With the completion of Tema Harbour in 1962 and the Volta Dam at Akosombo becoming operational in 1963, Tema started to take shape, giving hope to a newly-independent African nation that was determined to make its mark on the international scene.
Major industrial establishments, including the Volta Aluminum Company (VALCO), which came as a package with the construction of the dam, started to spring up.
To facilitate movement between the emerging industrial and port city of Tema and the national capital of Accra, our first President thought of an expressway which became the Accra-Tema Motorway, a project that was vehemently resisted by some politicians at the time, because they thought it was more of grandiose than a necessity in nature.
Tema, with its well-developed roads, industrial, commercial and residential estates, became the pride of the nation. It became the destination of young school leavers who sought a living at the sprawling main harbour, the adjoining fishing harbour and the numerous factories the city could boast of.
Those were the days Tema was vibrating with activity throughout the day and night, with big buses of the various companies ferrying their workers to and from work on their shifts.
You could see the buses belonging to VALCO, Tema Shipyard and Drydock Corporation, Ghana Textiles and Printing (GTP), Ghana Textiles Manufacturing Company (GTMC), Tema Steel Works, Sanyo Electronics, Akasanoma Electronics, Tema Food Complex Company (TFCC) and of course the Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority and many others on the streets of Tema moving in all directions for 24 hours.
These were vibrant companies that provided thousands of Ghanaian workers and their dependents with livelihood. Ghana was really heading towards industrialisation. Forty-seven years after coming into existence, Tema should have matured by now and blossomed into a major industrial centre comparable to similar cities in other parts of the world. But that was not to be. Decay set in and Tema started to lose its glory.
The textile industry collapsed, thanks to an overzealous implementation of a trade liberalisation policy and with that, the collapse of GTP, GTMC and the rest.
A cruel divestiture policy witnessed the state losing interest in many of its major enterprises including the Ghana Steel Works, the Tema Food Complex Corporation, the Tema Shipyard and Drydock Corporation and the Tema Cold Stores Company.
Some of these companies have collapsed entirely, while others are struggling for survival in private hands.
You do not need to enter Tema before coming face-to-face with its decay and past glory. When coming from the direction of Nungua, using the beach road, one could sense the gloom of Tema. The road does not give any indication that one was entering the nation’s biggest industrial and seaport city. I doubt if the situation will be the same in other major port cities like Manchester, Liverpool, Rotterdam or Hamburg, to name a few.
No matter how poor we claim to be as a country that beach road leading to the harbour should have been developed into a dual-carriageway, well-asphalted, to give meaning to our boast that we are the gate-way to the West Africa sub-region.
Driving on that stretch of road in the night can be a nightmare and there had been reports of armed robberies and car snatches on several occasions. Incidentally, along this road is the multi-million dollar Cocobod warehouse complex, which is to serve as a transit point for cocoa brought from the hinterland before shipment to foreign lands.
The Accra-Tema Motorway, which was not only criticised but condemned in the past, has remained the main artery linking the port city to Accra and any mishap on that route, such as accident, means Accra is cut off from its junior sister.
Tema looks like an orphaned city even though two state institutions — the Tema Development Corporation (TDC) and the Tema Municipal Authority (TMA) — are competing for the revenues it can bring into their coffers.
The TDC sells Tema lands, while the TMA collects the market tolls and property rates and others. Some officials of the two state institutions are far better off than Tema itself. While the two institutions know where to make their monies, none could worry about its state of roads and other infrastructure.
For its strategic national importance and for its small size, Tema roads are some of the worst in the country and constitute a big blot on our values as a nation. How come that a city that brings so much to the country in terms of revenue, a city where most of our exports and imports are channeled through be so neglected. Those who do not know may visit Tema one of these days, especially after a heavy downpour.
It is an undeniable fact that TDC lands had benefited some of its officials more than the city and the original landowners of Nungua Traditional Area. That was why the Nungua people started to agitate for the return of their lands when they realised that those at TDC were only interested in selling the lands for personal profit instead of the projects they were originally acquired for.
Dr Nkrumah, according to reports, felt nostalgic about Tema, while in exile in Conakry, in the Republic of Guinea after his overthrow, because he could see a dream fading away. Tema had never reached its full bloom before the gloom set in.
Tema has become a fragmented city with most of its settlements or communities having nothing in common with one another. There are no road networks connecting these settlements. Take communities 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 20. They are supposed to be part of Tema.
However, residents of these communities have to force their way onto the motorway through unapproved routes or use the circuitous beach road before reaching Tema city centre. A road over the Sakumo Lagoon to link main Tema and the Sakumono area and another linking Community 11 to the Klagon and the Sakumono areas have remained on the drawing board.
Could it be that Tema’s problems are partly because there is no clear definition of the roles of the TDC and TMA? Then one must go, and TDC, having finished selling the lands has exhausted its stay. Be as it may, the Tema story cannot be isolated from the decay that has engulfed this nation of ours. It is our wish that the change will reflect in the fortunes of our once proud port city of Tema, which is lying right on the Greenwich Meridian. Remember the once famous Meridian Hotel?
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
WEEP NOT, UNCLE NYANTAKYI (MAY 12, 2009)
I tried stepping into the shoes of Mr Kwesi Nyantakyi, the President of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), to experience the turmoil that was going through his mind as he could see the league he presides over losing steam and collapsing before his eyes.
Mr Nyantakyi could not hold back his anguish, embarrassment and disappointment at the Ghanaian attitude of rejecting the local league as against the total embrace of the European, especially the English football league, system.
The reasons are many. One of them, according to Mr Nyantakyi, is the local media factor which he sees as a major culprit in this national scandal. He thinks the local media’s excessive focus on the European leagues has contributed immensely in diverting attention from the local league. That may be partly true, since the media only mirror what society is.
We do not expect the media to act differently in a country where nothing local is of any value, while everything foreign is adored and revered. What Mr Nyantakyi sees as virtual rejection of the local league by Ghanaians goes beyond that. It is a total rejection of ourselves. At the core of that misfortune is what is called inferiority complex – a complex that has gripped us with embarrassing and devastating consequences without our realising it.
Mr Nyantakyi should try to find out what respect a league will have or what attraction it will hold when it parades clubs with foreign names. Take our league table and you will be wondering whether you are seeing a local league table or a foreign one.
Why should we take pride in having names like Chelsea and Arsenal on our league table when the average Englishman will not spare a second to think about any of our football clubs? This is where mental slavery has brought us. We have lost interest in our local names and we think we can gain acceptance when we make mockery of ourselves by imitating foreign titles.
We are already aware of how obsessed we are with foreign foods, clothing, names, accents and mannerisms, music, in fact everything foreign. But this latest craze of naming local clubs after foreign teams has propelled us to a higher plane of subservience.
Apart from these psychological barriers to development, our football clubs are not organised on professional lines. Our local teams are treated like private properties without any accountability.
Which of the clubs can point at an edifice and call it as its office and club house, where supporters can meet and take serious decisions? Show me a club that can point at a well-built training ground, let alone a stadium. Show me a shop where one can walk in confidently to purchase souvenir items of even Asante Kotoko or Hearts of Oak, the two top clubs in the country.
In Europe, the clubs we admire so much are institutions that are managed professionally and whose support base is solid. Their managers are given the free hand to operate and take the glory when there is success or the shame and dismissal when it is the other way round. Here, things are done at the whims and caprices of a few individuals. Club expenses are paid from the pockets of individuals whose words are commands.
Another problem is the type of places we call stadiums. If you immediately switch to a local station to watch a local league match after watching a European league match, you will be wondering whether we belong to this same planet. A bushy pitch with a wire fence at best and as would be expected, a few scattered spectators. Where is the attraction?
Our league itself is not competitive and most results are predictable. The FA members are mostly club owners and so conflict of interest and manipulations are unnecessarily rampant, to throw matches this way or that way.
Several things were done in the past to ensure that it was either Kotoko or Hearts of Oak that should win the league. The other clubs are, therefore, mere participants to make the numbers. With that competitive edge taken out of the league, the smaller clubs find it difficult to invest in the game, while the big ones do not overstretch themselves to elevate their game.
Television coverage of matches here is appalling. With one or two cameras swinging from left to right, viewers are given very little to be excited about.
In the past, we took everything for granted because there was no room for choice. Technology has caught up with us and given us the freedom to choose. It has also exposed our inadequacies and limitations.
I do not have a problem with those who get glued to the TV sets to watch foreign matches. The world is a global village and we must enjoy to good things that phenomenon offers. I am, however, worried about the fanaticism which is emerging in our support for these foreign clubs.
I do not think the English, the French, the Italians or the Germans will recognise our support for their idol clubs. Those commentators who make those loud noises on the radio stations should know that nobody in London, Manchester or Liverpool is interested in them. If there should be any interest, it will be disdain and scorn for a people who cannot dream big about themselves.
It is, therefore, important that we keep reminding ourselves that no matter how hoarse we shout cheering Chelsea, Liverpool or Manchester United, the only league we have is our own and the earlier we accept this fact and approach the organisation with a professional touch, the better.
Mr Nyantakyi’s lamentations will not change things unless we adopt pragmatic measures to improve upon the quality of our league. The FA must begin to realise that its obsession with foreign, white-skinned coaches has its serious psychological effects on the local league. It keeps telling Ghanaians that they are not up to the standard. Consequently, they will take solace in the foreign leagues.
The FA must inject discipline into the league and make it more competitive so that until the last match is played, predicting the league winner will remain a difficult task. All the clubs must be given equal opportunities to participate and progress in the league. That also means the standard of officiating must improve significantly.
Adopting foreign names only reminds us of our colonial past and reduces our dignity as a sovereign people who should cherish what belongs to us. It is now a common sight to see the jerseys of some foreign clubs with the names of their popular players embossed on them being sold on the streets of Accra and other towns. I have even seen other souvenir items, including boxes of tissue paper in the colours of Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and others being sold here.
In a way, it shows that we are also very global. But seriously speaking, over-indulgence in these things does not create any positive image for us but rather makes it obvious that, after all, we have accepted our fate us inferior specimens of the human race.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Mr Nyantakyi could not hold back his anguish, embarrassment and disappointment at the Ghanaian attitude of rejecting the local league as against the total embrace of the European, especially the English football league, system.
The reasons are many. One of them, according to Mr Nyantakyi, is the local media factor which he sees as a major culprit in this national scandal. He thinks the local media’s excessive focus on the European leagues has contributed immensely in diverting attention from the local league. That may be partly true, since the media only mirror what society is.
We do not expect the media to act differently in a country where nothing local is of any value, while everything foreign is adored and revered. What Mr Nyantakyi sees as virtual rejection of the local league by Ghanaians goes beyond that. It is a total rejection of ourselves. At the core of that misfortune is what is called inferiority complex – a complex that has gripped us with embarrassing and devastating consequences without our realising it.
Mr Nyantakyi should try to find out what respect a league will have or what attraction it will hold when it parades clubs with foreign names. Take our league table and you will be wondering whether you are seeing a local league table or a foreign one.
Why should we take pride in having names like Chelsea and Arsenal on our league table when the average Englishman will not spare a second to think about any of our football clubs? This is where mental slavery has brought us. We have lost interest in our local names and we think we can gain acceptance when we make mockery of ourselves by imitating foreign titles.
We are already aware of how obsessed we are with foreign foods, clothing, names, accents and mannerisms, music, in fact everything foreign. But this latest craze of naming local clubs after foreign teams has propelled us to a higher plane of subservience.
Apart from these psychological barriers to development, our football clubs are not organised on professional lines. Our local teams are treated like private properties without any accountability.
Which of the clubs can point at an edifice and call it as its office and club house, where supporters can meet and take serious decisions? Show me a club that can point at a well-built training ground, let alone a stadium. Show me a shop where one can walk in confidently to purchase souvenir items of even Asante Kotoko or Hearts of Oak, the two top clubs in the country.
In Europe, the clubs we admire so much are institutions that are managed professionally and whose support base is solid. Their managers are given the free hand to operate and take the glory when there is success or the shame and dismissal when it is the other way round. Here, things are done at the whims and caprices of a few individuals. Club expenses are paid from the pockets of individuals whose words are commands.
Another problem is the type of places we call stadiums. If you immediately switch to a local station to watch a local league match after watching a European league match, you will be wondering whether we belong to this same planet. A bushy pitch with a wire fence at best and as would be expected, a few scattered spectators. Where is the attraction?
Our league itself is not competitive and most results are predictable. The FA members are mostly club owners and so conflict of interest and manipulations are unnecessarily rampant, to throw matches this way or that way.
Several things were done in the past to ensure that it was either Kotoko or Hearts of Oak that should win the league. The other clubs are, therefore, mere participants to make the numbers. With that competitive edge taken out of the league, the smaller clubs find it difficult to invest in the game, while the big ones do not overstretch themselves to elevate their game.
Television coverage of matches here is appalling. With one or two cameras swinging from left to right, viewers are given very little to be excited about.
In the past, we took everything for granted because there was no room for choice. Technology has caught up with us and given us the freedom to choose. It has also exposed our inadequacies and limitations.
I do not have a problem with those who get glued to the TV sets to watch foreign matches. The world is a global village and we must enjoy to good things that phenomenon offers. I am, however, worried about the fanaticism which is emerging in our support for these foreign clubs.
I do not think the English, the French, the Italians or the Germans will recognise our support for their idol clubs. Those commentators who make those loud noises on the radio stations should know that nobody in London, Manchester or Liverpool is interested in them. If there should be any interest, it will be disdain and scorn for a people who cannot dream big about themselves.
It is, therefore, important that we keep reminding ourselves that no matter how hoarse we shout cheering Chelsea, Liverpool or Manchester United, the only league we have is our own and the earlier we accept this fact and approach the organisation with a professional touch, the better.
Mr Nyantakyi’s lamentations will not change things unless we adopt pragmatic measures to improve upon the quality of our league. The FA must begin to realise that its obsession with foreign, white-skinned coaches has its serious psychological effects on the local league. It keeps telling Ghanaians that they are not up to the standard. Consequently, they will take solace in the foreign leagues.
The FA must inject discipline into the league and make it more competitive so that until the last match is played, predicting the league winner will remain a difficult task. All the clubs must be given equal opportunities to participate and progress in the league. That also means the standard of officiating must improve significantly.
Adopting foreign names only reminds us of our colonial past and reduces our dignity as a sovereign people who should cherish what belongs to us. It is now a common sight to see the jerseys of some foreign clubs with the names of their popular players embossed on them being sold on the streets of Accra and other towns. I have even seen other souvenir items, including boxes of tissue paper in the colours of Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester United and others being sold here.
In a way, it shows that we are also very global. But seriously speaking, over-indulgence in these things does not create any positive image for us but rather makes it obvious that, after all, we have accepted our fate us inferior specimens of the human race.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
IS CEPS A VICTIM OF STATE CONSPIRACY? (MAY 5, 2009)
GOVERNMENTS have a way of dismantling or suffocating to extinction state institutions. This becomes easier if the interest of some members of the government run parallel to that of the state and the general public whose interest governments are under mandate to serve.
Like coup makers, they lie low waiting for the least excuse in the form of agitation or protests, then they spring to action, putting their diabolical and self-serving plans into practice.
Under the pretext of breathing better managerial competence into these institutions, certain policy initiatives are implemented, which ultimately, in almost all cases, bring these institutions to their knees and prepare the ground for their collapse.
Every remedial move, once it was conceived on honest and sincere grounds, adds to the woes of the institutions, leading to their sad demise.
From the ashes or debris of these state institutions will sprout a huge fortune to serve the appetite of a few politicians and their cohorts in business, while the nation and, Ghanaians, for that matter, become the losers. In frantic desperation, we resort to foreign intervention to restore what should not have collapsed in the first place, if our allegiance were to the nation and the majority of the people.
Many state institutions have gone down the drain, not because the country lacks managerial competence or dedicated people, but simply because the decisions and actions of some people, who, while exercising state authority, prefer to owe allegiance rather to themselves, instead of the state which clothed them in the authority they choose to exercise capriciously.
Upon reflection, it is possible to realise that Ghana Airways, the national carrier, would not have been transformed into the ghost that is haunting us now, if politicians had insulated it against governmental interference and allowed it to operate on strictly business lines.
In pretending to salvage it, Ghana Airways was only hastened to its premature death, only to create a fertile ground for some unscrupulous individuals with connections in high places to team up with their type from foreign lands to harvest what they had never sown.
Ghana Airways should have been alive today, not only feeding the national kitty, but proudly flying our national flag in the skies to foreign places. A few people have made gains, but the nation has lost.
There are many other state institutions that have gone the way of Ghana Airways. Ghana Telecom, now Vodafone, is a clear example. Why should Ghana go to Malaysia for managerial competence to manage our only national telecommunication network?
Gradually, the excuse went on until now, when we are only playing host to our own company. It is an undeniable fact that behind the collapse of every state institution or enterprise, there are the invisible hands of some people who were chosen or elected in the first place to ensure that not only they survive but also thrive.
The modus operandi had always been the same. Starve them of vital resources; load the managerial team with dubious and incompetent persons whose only qualifications are loyalty and connections and leave the rest for time to provide.
One important and strategic state institution that is gradually being sapped of its energies is the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS). CEPS is not suffering alone as an institution, but also the nation, Ghana, which it serves as a major revenue collection agency and the thousands of highly trained professional Ghanaians in its employment. Apart from collecting revenue, CEPS also provides the country with security, collects statistics and facilitates trade.
While this is happening, some politicians, for whatever reason, have turned their eyes and ears elsewhere, seeing and hearing nothing.
In 2000, the Government of Ghana decided to pursue an initiative designed to make major progress in trade facilitation and launched the Ghana Gateway Project with the intention of making Ghana the gateway to West Africa. This initiative necessitated the signing of agreements with two destination inspection companies (DICs) to do verification, classification and valuation duties, among others, on behalf of the government in 2000. They were also to manage risk profile (red, green, yellow channels) and issue final classification and valuation reports (FCVRs). These companies were increased to four in 2002. The agreements give room for CEPS takeover at the expiry of the agreements of the DICs when CEPS might have built sufficient capacity for destination inspection duties.
To facilitate this takeover, the Government of Ghana, through the Ministry of Trade and Industry, with support from United States Agency for International Development (USAID), commissioned the drawing of a project plan for the takeover of customs classification and valuation functions by CEPS under the Customs Clearance Component of the Trade and Investment Programme for a Competitive Export Economy (TIPCEE).
The project plan, which was presented to the government in January 2008, made several recommendations which included the ultimate takeover of the core functions of classification and valuation by CEPS after December 31, 2008, when the contract of the DICs would have expired.
Further to that, all in preparing the ground for CEPS to resume its core functions, the Ministry of Finance and the Revenue Agencies Governing Board (RAGB) signed a contract with Bankswitch, IT consultants, to provide CEPS with electronic submission of all documents and a valuation database. There is to be a transition period through December, 2008, during which the Bankswitch system will be implemented.
It was envisaged that by December 2008, there would be a centrally located classification and valuation unit fully equipped and manned by CEPS. The new IT system, which has been accepted by CEPS, has several advantages. It will provide greater transparency in the entry process than is currently the case; all documents will be retained in the system for seven years, making post-entry audit much easier and the system will record all changes to entry documents, thus discouraging fraud.
Over the years, CEPS has kept to its schedule of preparing its staff, who under the agreement, were to be trained by the DICs and had met all requirements to assume full responsibility for destination on January 1, 2009. The Commissioner of CEPS himself, Mr Emmanuel Doku, stated this point clearly in October, when he announced during the inauguration of the Classification and Valuation Complex in Accra that CEPS was more than prepared to face the challenges when the time came. In short, a lot of investments and sacrifices had been made over the years to get this important national assignment going.
It, therefore, came as a big surprise, when the previous administration started some manoeuvres to keep CEPS in limbo for another long eight years. This culminated in the signing of an agreement with a new company, Ghana Customs Inspection Company Limited (GCICL) on Sunday, December 28, 2008. Incidentally, apart from being a non-working day, that was the day, the attention of most Ghanaians was focused on the final stages of the 2008 presidential election.
To add to the intrigue, the parent company of GCICL is Ghana Link Network Services Limited, a destination inspection company which ceased to operate, and which, while in operation, ran into trouble with CEPS over the alleged fraudulent use of final classification and valuation reports (FCVRs), which cost the nation revenue loss running into billions of cedis. That matter is yet to be fully settled before the signing of the new controversial agreement that gives the company bigger room to operate.
Unfortunately, the posture of some top officials at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, including the new minister, is not encouraging. There is some murmuring that after all these efforts and investments, CEPS still lacks the human and material capacity and capability to perform its core functions.
It is too early yet to risk drawing certain conclusions about conflict of interest raging in the minds of people in high places. But it will be a better option for the minister to be making a case for a state institution such as CEPS, in which the state has invested so much, rather than to be leaning towards the side of a private company, which, at best, will drain the nation of its vital revenue.
There are more battles ahead, and the choice, to some of us, if offered the opportunity, will be between the state and a few others. We will rather be in the trench on the side of the state and, for that matter, the majority of Ghanaians. We have lost a lot of state enterprises to satisfy the greed of a few, but CEPS, as a statutory body with a lot of strategic importance, must not be allowed to suffer a similar fate, just to make a few individuals, including those who proffer to be working in the national interest rich.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Like coup makers, they lie low waiting for the least excuse in the form of agitation or protests, then they spring to action, putting their diabolical and self-serving plans into practice.
Under the pretext of breathing better managerial competence into these institutions, certain policy initiatives are implemented, which ultimately, in almost all cases, bring these institutions to their knees and prepare the ground for their collapse.
Every remedial move, once it was conceived on honest and sincere grounds, adds to the woes of the institutions, leading to their sad demise.
From the ashes or debris of these state institutions will sprout a huge fortune to serve the appetite of a few politicians and their cohorts in business, while the nation and, Ghanaians, for that matter, become the losers. In frantic desperation, we resort to foreign intervention to restore what should not have collapsed in the first place, if our allegiance were to the nation and the majority of the people.
Many state institutions have gone down the drain, not because the country lacks managerial competence or dedicated people, but simply because the decisions and actions of some people, who, while exercising state authority, prefer to owe allegiance rather to themselves, instead of the state which clothed them in the authority they choose to exercise capriciously.
Upon reflection, it is possible to realise that Ghana Airways, the national carrier, would not have been transformed into the ghost that is haunting us now, if politicians had insulated it against governmental interference and allowed it to operate on strictly business lines.
In pretending to salvage it, Ghana Airways was only hastened to its premature death, only to create a fertile ground for some unscrupulous individuals with connections in high places to team up with their type from foreign lands to harvest what they had never sown.
Ghana Airways should have been alive today, not only feeding the national kitty, but proudly flying our national flag in the skies to foreign places. A few people have made gains, but the nation has lost.
There are many other state institutions that have gone the way of Ghana Airways. Ghana Telecom, now Vodafone, is a clear example. Why should Ghana go to Malaysia for managerial competence to manage our only national telecommunication network?
Gradually, the excuse went on until now, when we are only playing host to our own company. It is an undeniable fact that behind the collapse of every state institution or enterprise, there are the invisible hands of some people who were chosen or elected in the first place to ensure that not only they survive but also thrive.
The modus operandi had always been the same. Starve them of vital resources; load the managerial team with dubious and incompetent persons whose only qualifications are loyalty and connections and leave the rest for time to provide.
One important and strategic state institution that is gradually being sapped of its energies is the Customs, Excise and Preventive Service (CEPS). CEPS is not suffering alone as an institution, but also the nation, Ghana, which it serves as a major revenue collection agency and the thousands of highly trained professional Ghanaians in its employment. Apart from collecting revenue, CEPS also provides the country with security, collects statistics and facilitates trade.
While this is happening, some politicians, for whatever reason, have turned their eyes and ears elsewhere, seeing and hearing nothing.
In 2000, the Government of Ghana decided to pursue an initiative designed to make major progress in trade facilitation and launched the Ghana Gateway Project with the intention of making Ghana the gateway to West Africa. This initiative necessitated the signing of agreements with two destination inspection companies (DICs) to do verification, classification and valuation duties, among others, on behalf of the government in 2000. They were also to manage risk profile (red, green, yellow channels) and issue final classification and valuation reports (FCVRs). These companies were increased to four in 2002. The agreements give room for CEPS takeover at the expiry of the agreements of the DICs when CEPS might have built sufficient capacity for destination inspection duties.
To facilitate this takeover, the Government of Ghana, through the Ministry of Trade and Industry, with support from United States Agency for International Development (USAID), commissioned the drawing of a project plan for the takeover of customs classification and valuation functions by CEPS under the Customs Clearance Component of the Trade and Investment Programme for a Competitive Export Economy (TIPCEE).
The project plan, which was presented to the government in January 2008, made several recommendations which included the ultimate takeover of the core functions of classification and valuation by CEPS after December 31, 2008, when the contract of the DICs would have expired.
Further to that, all in preparing the ground for CEPS to resume its core functions, the Ministry of Finance and the Revenue Agencies Governing Board (RAGB) signed a contract with Bankswitch, IT consultants, to provide CEPS with electronic submission of all documents and a valuation database. There is to be a transition period through December, 2008, during which the Bankswitch system will be implemented.
It was envisaged that by December 2008, there would be a centrally located classification and valuation unit fully equipped and manned by CEPS. The new IT system, which has been accepted by CEPS, has several advantages. It will provide greater transparency in the entry process than is currently the case; all documents will be retained in the system for seven years, making post-entry audit much easier and the system will record all changes to entry documents, thus discouraging fraud.
Over the years, CEPS has kept to its schedule of preparing its staff, who under the agreement, were to be trained by the DICs and had met all requirements to assume full responsibility for destination on January 1, 2009. The Commissioner of CEPS himself, Mr Emmanuel Doku, stated this point clearly in October, when he announced during the inauguration of the Classification and Valuation Complex in Accra that CEPS was more than prepared to face the challenges when the time came. In short, a lot of investments and sacrifices had been made over the years to get this important national assignment going.
It, therefore, came as a big surprise, when the previous administration started some manoeuvres to keep CEPS in limbo for another long eight years. This culminated in the signing of an agreement with a new company, Ghana Customs Inspection Company Limited (GCICL) on Sunday, December 28, 2008. Incidentally, apart from being a non-working day, that was the day, the attention of most Ghanaians was focused on the final stages of the 2008 presidential election.
To add to the intrigue, the parent company of GCICL is Ghana Link Network Services Limited, a destination inspection company which ceased to operate, and which, while in operation, ran into trouble with CEPS over the alleged fraudulent use of final classification and valuation reports (FCVRs), which cost the nation revenue loss running into billions of cedis. That matter is yet to be fully settled before the signing of the new controversial agreement that gives the company bigger room to operate.
Unfortunately, the posture of some top officials at the Ministry of Trade and Industry, including the new minister, is not encouraging. There is some murmuring that after all these efforts and investments, CEPS still lacks the human and material capacity and capability to perform its core functions.
It is too early yet to risk drawing certain conclusions about conflict of interest raging in the minds of people in high places. But it will be a better option for the minister to be making a case for a state institution such as CEPS, in which the state has invested so much, rather than to be leaning towards the side of a private company, which, at best, will drain the nation of its vital revenue.
There are more battles ahead, and the choice, to some of us, if offered the opportunity, will be between the state and a few others. We will rather be in the trench on the side of the state and, for that matter, the majority of Ghanaians. We have lost a lot of state enterprises to satisfy the greed of a few, but CEPS, as a statutory body with a lot of strategic importance, must not be allowed to suffer a similar fate, just to make a few individuals, including those who proffer to be working in the national interest rich.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
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