By Kofi Akordor
that some professionals, especially doctors, are reluctant to accept posting to some parts of the country, particularly the north, is no longer news. If anything, it is a constant reminder of our failure to manage the affairs of this country to the best advantage of all.
There are several reasons why some people find it difficult to work in certain parts of the country but instead of addressing them, we think the solution lies in sermonising or painting these officers as irresponsible and ungrateful.
It is true that professionals are trained at state expense and, therefore, they are expected to reciprocate the gesture by serving where their services are needed. But that should not take away their right to have a simple but decent environment to operate in.
It is not by accident that doctors and teachers have been at the receiving end of public criticism for abandoning the rural people who shouldered most of the burden of their training. It shows that these are professionals whose services are critical to the needs of the rural areas if there should be any holistic national development agenda.
From all indications, it is apparent this is lacking.
If we take doctors and other health-related workers as an example, we know that conditions in many parts of the country are such that it will take more than nationalism, patriotism or appeals to the conscience of individuals to get people motivated enough to work in those places. That is why the state should have strategised so that every health professional experiences the harsh realities of rural life or the hostile environment of certain parts of the country as he or she progresses in his or her career.
If it becomes mandatory, as a national policy, for every young doctor to practise in areas outside Accra, Kumasi and the urban centres in the south for a period of time before earning promotion or getting the opportunity to specialise or do postgraduate programmes, the problem of staff shortage in deprived areas may be less pronounced.
Unfortunately, there seems to be no such policy existence, and it exists, there is little effort to implement it. That is why doctors can afford to refuse posting to the north and other deprived areas because they know others before them who did the same without sanctions.
Also, they might have learnt useful lessons from those before them who accepted such posting in the past and became victims of their patriotism, dedication and hard work. It is a typical “out of sight, out of mind” syndrome.
In short, there seems to be no serious ground rules governing postings and transfers in the health sector. That is why while some spend their entire professional lives in the big cities, others are asked to go to the regions. Naturally, some doctors see these postings and transfers as punitive, as they block, as often is the case, the chances of advancement and professional elevation.
That should not have been the case. Those who offer or accept to render services to our rural people should have been in the front line of consideration for recognition.
As Dr Elias K. Sory, the Director-General of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), himself acknowledged, the issue was now beyond the GHS alone and, therefore, called for a holistic national approach to tackle it.
He admitted in an interview on the matter that the various incentive packages designed in the past to attract health professionals to the deprived areas had outlived their impact.
Dr Sory went further to say that the problem went beyond monetary considerations, since young doctors also wanted to work in an environment where they could have access to good accommodation, good schools and other facilities for themselves and their families. The medical facilities these personnel are posted to should also be well-equipped to make working there attractive.
That is why he suggested the upgrading of all regional hospitals to teaching hospital level to make it possible for young doctors to work in a conducive environment close to the communities.
I stated earlier that sermonising, instead of addressing the real issues, would not solve the problem. You do not post a highly trained professional to a place where his/her services are seriously needed without thinking of his/her accommodation, where his/her children will attend school or access medical care.
Politicians who are given ministerial appointments, with all their attractions, do not fail to insist on government bungalows. Why should the doctor accept his fate into the wilderness without protest?
In other words, there must be goodwill on the part of all — doctors, the GHS acting on behalf of the government and the communities. The GHS must set the ground rules that must be applicable to all. Once there is no favouritism or anything that comes close to that, there will be no victimisation.
Our health facilities need serious rehabilitation and upgrading in terms of modern facilities and decent accommodation for health professionals. The future of the children of these health professionals should not be ignored. It should be possible to upgrade at least one junior high school in each district capital to a level comparable to some of those in Accra as an attraction for public servants, including health professionals, who are posted to the districts.
It is time we reviewed our national development strategy and disengage ourselves from sinking our national resources into Accra alone which has become more or less a bottomless pit swallowing everything thrown into it. We should begin to focus more on the district and regional capitals as a way of attracting and retaining professional manpower there.
There are many people who would not want to spend even a day in Accra if they could get access to certain basic facilities for themselves and their families in some corner somewhere.
As we have seen, the appeals and threats have not been able to solve the rural-urban drift. They have not staffed our medical facilities with the much-needed professionals. You may condemn or even insult those who refuse posting to the rural areas, but once those with political power are not showing the required goodwill or are not ready to forfeit a little bit of their comfort, we will be hard-pressed expecting sacrifice from others.
The best option is pragmatism and a deliberate effort to make every part of this country human-friendly.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
A Mayor’s vision for the capital
By Kofi Akordor
“THE greatest injustice I will do to Accra is not to bring my experience gained outside to bear on the development of Ghana’s national capital for which I will regret later.”
That was how he opened an interview with this writer and in these words Mr Alfred Oko Vanderpuije, the Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), outlined his vision for Accra, the nation’s capital.
In what he described as the Seven Pillars, Mr Vanderpuije said his vision for Accra was captured in seven major areas. These are: solid and liquid waste management, revenue mobilisation, decongest Accra by removing all street hawkers from the streets and ensuring availability of pavements for the use of pedestrians, ensure the demolition of all unauthorised structures in waterways, improve on existing road infrastructure and construct new ones, implement an effective solar-powered street lighting system throughout the metropolis and provide social amenities, including access to education and health facilities, for residents of the city.
Everyone who returns to Accra after visiting other cities in Europe, America and Asia will come to one realisation — that Accra is not planned, it has narrow and poorly-constructed roads, the city centre is densely populated with street hawkers and illegal structures and, generally speaking, Accra symbolises constructional indiscipline and the lack of political will and direction to make it what it should be.
Mr Vanderpuije is not oblivious to these facts and he takes consolation from the words of President Barack Obama that this country can only develop the way we want it if we allow state institutions to operate the way they should.
This is in reference to the reaction of the public and sometimes the political leadership anytime the city authorities attempt to enforce the various bye-laws on street hawking, illegal structures at unauthorised places and sanitation laws which have cumulatively made Accra a huge jungle that defies all laws of order and modernity.
Mr Vanderpuije hit a brick wall a few weeks ago when he set in motion his pledge to decongest the city, clear it of street hawkers and enforce sanitation regulations. The criticisms which came from people in government even drowned those from victims of the exercise. He is, however, determined to carry out his agenda of making Accra a Millennium City by 2015 to meet part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
“The cynics thought the decongestion exercise in Accra would be a nine days’ wonder, but we are winning by monitoring the situation continuously. Every little bit of success must be monitored and vigorously enforced,” he said with enthusiasm.
To attain this ambitious goal which is envisaged under the MDGs, Mr Vanderpuije said certain urban centres would be developed to showcase examples of good urban planning that provided good sanitation, good health, clean and adequate water supply, education facilities and a good road network for residents. With the support of the Earth Institute, communities such as James Town, Mamprobi, Chorkor, Mamobi, Nima and Accra New Town would be upgraded with modern amenities and facilities to make Accra a modern city for the 21st century.
These are challenges that could only be met with adequate financial support and the political will. To that end, Mr Vanderpuije has outlined a plan to overhaul and modernise the revenue collection system of the AMA, which currently relies on property rates (commercial and industrial), lorry park and market tolls. He thinks with a modernised and expanded tax system, the AMA can raise more revenue to support its core activities.
He said part of the expansion of the revenue generation system means the AMA would enter into commercial ventures either solely or in partnership with other investors.
One of the projects dear to the heart of Mr Vanderpuije and which is expected to take off before the end of the year is the installation of a waste processing plant to generate energy.
Waste collection and management are taking a heavy toll on the resources of the AMA which, according to the AMA chief executive, takes over 90 per cent of the city’s resources. As you read this, the AMA is heavily indebted to refuse collectors to the tune of GH¢12 million.
The waste processing plant will, therefore, play multiple roles by solving the problem of waste collection, relocating dumping sites, save cost, provide revenue and generate energy for industrial use.
As part of the decongestion exercise, the city mayor said the foodstuffs market would be relocated to the Odawna area to enhance the food market, while that at Agbogbloshie would be relocated at Amasaman. This will make Accra a real city and not a huge market.
Mr Vanderpuije has plans to phace out the shift system in basic schools in the metropolis. He has projected that from September 2010 when the new academic year begins, no school-going child will seek refuge under the shift system to avoid the classroom. In short, the shift system will be a thing of the past as the AMA will endeavour to provide the needed facilities to ensure that all schools run a full stream of eight hours.
After this, the AMA will enforce the bye-laws which ban children of school age from hawking. Eventually, Mr Vanderpuije hopes that that venture will curb the socio-economic devastation of children. But this is at an envisaged cost of GH¢6 million which comes from the AMA’s coffers and donor support.
On noise-making, Mr Vanderpuije has admitted it is a big challenge facing the AMA. He said since most of the noise is made by churches, some of which have operated for a very long time, the AMA will begin the approach by way of dialogue, after which the law will be applied. For those churches and commercial entities that operate without permit, the response is simple — they should cease the illegality.
On illegal structures, the AMA boss said his immediate focus was on structures on water courses and pavements, after which he would come to encroachment.
Meanwhile, the AMA are putting in place preventive measures to ensure that the incidence of illegal and unauthorised structures is halted. As part of the measure, the AMA will work and approve permits for buildings expeditiously.
Mr Vanderpuije certainly may not have been the first person who sat in the AMA chief executive chair to have nursed such ambitious dreams. It is the hope of many Ghanaians that what others before him lacked — the vision, the will power, the political support and the resources — to execute their mandate will not elude him, so that with the support of the rest of us, Accra will be transformed into a city that is beautiful, user-friendly and ready to embrace the rest of the world as it welcomes the many investors expected in the country to participate in our oil and gas bonanza.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
“THE greatest injustice I will do to Accra is not to bring my experience gained outside to bear on the development of Ghana’s national capital for which I will regret later.”
That was how he opened an interview with this writer and in these words Mr Alfred Oko Vanderpuije, the Chief Executive of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA), outlined his vision for Accra, the nation’s capital.
In what he described as the Seven Pillars, Mr Vanderpuije said his vision for Accra was captured in seven major areas. These are: solid and liquid waste management, revenue mobilisation, decongest Accra by removing all street hawkers from the streets and ensuring availability of pavements for the use of pedestrians, ensure the demolition of all unauthorised structures in waterways, improve on existing road infrastructure and construct new ones, implement an effective solar-powered street lighting system throughout the metropolis and provide social amenities, including access to education and health facilities, for residents of the city.
Everyone who returns to Accra after visiting other cities in Europe, America and Asia will come to one realisation — that Accra is not planned, it has narrow and poorly-constructed roads, the city centre is densely populated with street hawkers and illegal structures and, generally speaking, Accra symbolises constructional indiscipline and the lack of political will and direction to make it what it should be.
Mr Vanderpuije is not oblivious to these facts and he takes consolation from the words of President Barack Obama that this country can only develop the way we want it if we allow state institutions to operate the way they should.
This is in reference to the reaction of the public and sometimes the political leadership anytime the city authorities attempt to enforce the various bye-laws on street hawking, illegal structures at unauthorised places and sanitation laws which have cumulatively made Accra a huge jungle that defies all laws of order and modernity.
Mr Vanderpuije hit a brick wall a few weeks ago when he set in motion his pledge to decongest the city, clear it of street hawkers and enforce sanitation regulations. The criticisms which came from people in government even drowned those from victims of the exercise. He is, however, determined to carry out his agenda of making Accra a Millennium City by 2015 to meet part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
“The cynics thought the decongestion exercise in Accra would be a nine days’ wonder, but we are winning by monitoring the situation continuously. Every little bit of success must be monitored and vigorously enforced,” he said with enthusiasm.
To attain this ambitious goal which is envisaged under the MDGs, Mr Vanderpuije said certain urban centres would be developed to showcase examples of good urban planning that provided good sanitation, good health, clean and adequate water supply, education facilities and a good road network for residents. With the support of the Earth Institute, communities such as James Town, Mamprobi, Chorkor, Mamobi, Nima and Accra New Town would be upgraded with modern amenities and facilities to make Accra a modern city for the 21st century.
These are challenges that could only be met with adequate financial support and the political will. To that end, Mr Vanderpuije has outlined a plan to overhaul and modernise the revenue collection system of the AMA, which currently relies on property rates (commercial and industrial), lorry park and market tolls. He thinks with a modernised and expanded tax system, the AMA can raise more revenue to support its core activities.
He said part of the expansion of the revenue generation system means the AMA would enter into commercial ventures either solely or in partnership with other investors.
One of the projects dear to the heart of Mr Vanderpuije and which is expected to take off before the end of the year is the installation of a waste processing plant to generate energy.
Waste collection and management are taking a heavy toll on the resources of the AMA which, according to the AMA chief executive, takes over 90 per cent of the city’s resources. As you read this, the AMA is heavily indebted to refuse collectors to the tune of GH¢12 million.
The waste processing plant will, therefore, play multiple roles by solving the problem of waste collection, relocating dumping sites, save cost, provide revenue and generate energy for industrial use.
As part of the decongestion exercise, the city mayor said the foodstuffs market would be relocated to the Odawna area to enhance the food market, while that at Agbogbloshie would be relocated at Amasaman. This will make Accra a real city and not a huge market.
Mr Vanderpuije has plans to phace out the shift system in basic schools in the metropolis. He has projected that from September 2010 when the new academic year begins, no school-going child will seek refuge under the shift system to avoid the classroom. In short, the shift system will be a thing of the past as the AMA will endeavour to provide the needed facilities to ensure that all schools run a full stream of eight hours.
After this, the AMA will enforce the bye-laws which ban children of school age from hawking. Eventually, Mr Vanderpuije hopes that that venture will curb the socio-economic devastation of children. But this is at an envisaged cost of GH¢6 million which comes from the AMA’s coffers and donor support.
On noise-making, Mr Vanderpuije has admitted it is a big challenge facing the AMA. He said since most of the noise is made by churches, some of which have operated for a very long time, the AMA will begin the approach by way of dialogue, after which the law will be applied. For those churches and commercial entities that operate without permit, the response is simple — they should cease the illegality.
On illegal structures, the AMA boss said his immediate focus was on structures on water courses and pavements, after which he would come to encroachment.
Meanwhile, the AMA are putting in place preventive measures to ensure that the incidence of illegal and unauthorised structures is halted. As part of the measure, the AMA will work and approve permits for buildings expeditiously.
Mr Vanderpuije certainly may not have been the first person who sat in the AMA chief executive chair to have nursed such ambitious dreams. It is the hope of many Ghanaians that what others before him lacked — the vision, the will power, the political support and the resources — to execute their mandate will not elude him, so that with the support of the rest of us, Accra will be transformed into a city that is beautiful, user-friendly and ready to embrace the rest of the world as it welcomes the many investors expected in the country to participate in our oil and gas bonanza.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
When the last light goes off
By Kofi Akordor
THE early warning signs were clear: power supply became erratic and unreliable. There were the usual explanations and assurances from the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), the nation’s power distributor, that its engineers and technicians were doing their best to restore power to consumers.
In the past, power outages were a regular feature, especially during the dry season when the water in the Akosombo Dam dropped as a consequence of low or no rainfall. Late last year, the situation was different — it had to do more with technical problems, poor logistics and obsolete equipment. And the three service providers — the Volta River Authority (VRA), which is the bulk supplier, GRIDCo, the transmission company, and the ECG, the distributor — have their problems which aggregately affect power supply to the consumer, whether domestic, commercial or industrial.
On December 12, 2009, the Ministry of Energy made a public admission of the constraints facing the power supply system when Mr Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, a Deputy Minister of Energy, told Parliament that supply of power was “characterised by inadequate generation reserve margin, excessive transmission, network constraints and poor voltage support, especially during the peak demand period of between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. each day”.
He explained further that even though total installed generation was about 1,945 megawatts, scheduled maintenance activities had reduced the total available capacity to about 1,425 megawatts.
He told Parliament that even though a number of projects were in place to bring about a significant improvement in the distribution system, the country would need US$1 billion in capital investments in the medium term to ensure a reliable distribution network in the country.
From Mr Buah’s submissions to Parliament last year, it should be obvious that power supply in the country is in a very critical situation in terms of installed capacity, transmission and distribution.
On Thursday, February 4, 2010, the VRA brought its case into the public domain when the Daily Graphic published an interview with Mrs Gertrude Koomson, its Head of Public Relations, on the VRA’s operations in relation to power supply in the country.
In that interview and subsequent disclosures, the VRA made it clear that unless there was a drastic improvement in the financial position of the VRA, the power supply system was heading towards total collapse.
Some of the problems enumerated by the VRA might sound too technical for ordinary people like us to understand, but in the ordinary person’s language, it is running at a loss.
First, a lot of organisations, including ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), industries and some mining companies owe the VRA over GH¢250 million and it has projected that it will lose GH¢570 million this year at current tariff rates.
Two, it had been compelled under circumstances beyond its control to sell power cheaper than the production cost and thereby forced into the situation where it is not able to raise enough funds to sustain its operations. For instance, the VRA says it spends between US$30 million and US$40 million on crude importation monthly to operate its thermal plants, without generating enough revenue to pay for the oil.
The last tariff adjustments were made in 2007, on the assumption that the West African Gas Pipeline Project would become operational and bring gas from Nigeria at a cheaper cost to Ghana. The story of that project is still being told in different voices. But the truth is, the Nigeria gas is yet to flow through the pipelines.
At a joint press conference on Monday, February 8, 2010, the three service providers placed their cards on the table and made a case for tariff adjustment to reflect current operational costs and to raise revenue to increase installed capacity, improve and modernise the transmission and distribution systems.
Mr Kweku Awortwi, the Chief Executive Officer of the VRA, made a 115 per cent rise in tariffs, while Mr Charles Darku of GRIDCo, which does the transmission, asked for a 173 per cent rise. Mr Cephas Gakpo of the ECG, the distribution company that comes into regular contact with the consuming public, made demand for a 105 per cent rise at current rates.
All the chief executives defended their positions with facts and figures which painted a gloomy picture of the power supply situation in the country in the future. The ECG says it will need at least US$180 million to meet its annual investment in order to meet the growing need for electricity in the country. Mr Gakpo said at current rates, the ECG was able to internally generate only US$30 million annually to support its capital investment projects, with the explanation that that amount could not satisfy the seven per cent annual demand growth for energy of the country.
On the part of GRIDCo, Mr Darku explained that the peak power demand in Accra had grown from about 110 megawatts in 1990 to about 400 megawatts as of last year. He said the transformer capacity of Accra, which is about 415, is almost exhausted. This demands a capital investment programme to cater for the construction of transmission lines and substations, the installation of transformers and substation equipment and the provision of tools for maintenance and operations.
Enter the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), the body that acts as a buffer between consumers and service providers. The PURC admitted receiving proposals from the three service providers but it was unable to approve them for several reasons. Its main concern, however, was that the three service providers had not exhibited enough efficiency in their operations; otherwise there could have been savings to reduce cost.
Again, the PURC argued that in 2007 it approved a 35 per cent tariff increase for the VRA on the understanding that it would generate 65 per cent of power from hydro and 35 per cent from thermal. Instead, the VRA generated 75 per cent from hydro and 25 per cent thermal and so to it the VRA had made enough money to sustain its operations.
The position of the PURC can be understood, especially from the point of view of consumers who want good and efficient service at a reasonable price. Where these are lacking, there is a weak argument for increase in tariffs. It can also be argued that the service providers cannot deny that there are administrative and operational bottlenecks within their systems that can impede smooth and cost-effective delivery of services.
These notwithstanding, there are some basic truths that we cannot run away from.
One, expansion over the years failed to match increase in population and for that matter increase in demand for electricity for domestic, commercial and industrial use.
Two, a lot of the equipment of these service providers are not only old and obsolete but also dangerous for service delivery, taking cognisance of the fact that electricity is a dangerous energy and the replacement of this equipment is capital intensive.
Three, the default rate is very high. Incidentally, most of the defaulters are government institutions which the ECG and the VRA in particular find difficult to deal with. It is the responsibility of the government to pay its due and meet its obligations, and then the service providers can proceed from there.
Four, not only is our population expanding; the economy is also growing and will even experience phenomenal growth when the oil and gas industry comes mainstream. Naturally the demand for power will increase.
Five, the Nigerian gas we have all been waiting for has so far proved elusive, which means the VRA will continue to rely on crude oil imports to operate its plants. The cedi/dollar rate is not in our favour and, therefore, to continue to pretend that everything is all right will mean postponing doomsday which will come with cataclysmic consequences.
It is, therefore, necessary to do a balancing act. While ensuring administrative and operational discipline, it is also prudent that the PURC sits down with the service providers to come to a reasonable compromise for the sake of adequate and efficient power supply. The three institutions cannot all be wrong at the same time and these are highly technical institutions that cannot just take things for granted.
The PURC may be making an argument in favour of consumers for now, but what about tomorrow when there is no power even to pay for? I heard Nana Owusu-Afare, the President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), saying that the association would prefer constant delivery of power at a cost to an erratic, irregular and sometimes no power system which, in the long run, becomes more expensive to industry.
That is the issue confronting us. Efficient and regular power delivery as against low tariffs — which comes first? Remember, when the last light goes off, there will be no tariffs to pay.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kakordor.blogspot.com
THE early warning signs were clear: power supply became erratic and unreliable. There were the usual explanations and assurances from the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), the nation’s power distributor, that its engineers and technicians were doing their best to restore power to consumers.
In the past, power outages were a regular feature, especially during the dry season when the water in the Akosombo Dam dropped as a consequence of low or no rainfall. Late last year, the situation was different — it had to do more with technical problems, poor logistics and obsolete equipment. And the three service providers — the Volta River Authority (VRA), which is the bulk supplier, GRIDCo, the transmission company, and the ECG, the distributor — have their problems which aggregately affect power supply to the consumer, whether domestic, commercial or industrial.
On December 12, 2009, the Ministry of Energy made a public admission of the constraints facing the power supply system when Mr Emmanuel Armah-Kofi Buah, a Deputy Minister of Energy, told Parliament that supply of power was “characterised by inadequate generation reserve margin, excessive transmission, network constraints and poor voltage support, especially during the peak demand period of between 6 p.m. and 10 p.m. each day”.
He explained further that even though total installed generation was about 1,945 megawatts, scheduled maintenance activities had reduced the total available capacity to about 1,425 megawatts.
He told Parliament that even though a number of projects were in place to bring about a significant improvement in the distribution system, the country would need US$1 billion in capital investments in the medium term to ensure a reliable distribution network in the country.
From Mr Buah’s submissions to Parliament last year, it should be obvious that power supply in the country is in a very critical situation in terms of installed capacity, transmission and distribution.
On Thursday, February 4, 2010, the VRA brought its case into the public domain when the Daily Graphic published an interview with Mrs Gertrude Koomson, its Head of Public Relations, on the VRA’s operations in relation to power supply in the country.
In that interview and subsequent disclosures, the VRA made it clear that unless there was a drastic improvement in the financial position of the VRA, the power supply system was heading towards total collapse.
Some of the problems enumerated by the VRA might sound too technical for ordinary people like us to understand, but in the ordinary person’s language, it is running at a loss.
First, a lot of organisations, including ministries, departments and agencies (MDAs), industries and some mining companies owe the VRA over GH¢250 million and it has projected that it will lose GH¢570 million this year at current tariff rates.
Two, it had been compelled under circumstances beyond its control to sell power cheaper than the production cost and thereby forced into the situation where it is not able to raise enough funds to sustain its operations. For instance, the VRA says it spends between US$30 million and US$40 million on crude importation monthly to operate its thermal plants, without generating enough revenue to pay for the oil.
The last tariff adjustments were made in 2007, on the assumption that the West African Gas Pipeline Project would become operational and bring gas from Nigeria at a cheaper cost to Ghana. The story of that project is still being told in different voices. But the truth is, the Nigeria gas is yet to flow through the pipelines.
At a joint press conference on Monday, February 8, 2010, the three service providers placed their cards on the table and made a case for tariff adjustment to reflect current operational costs and to raise revenue to increase installed capacity, improve and modernise the transmission and distribution systems.
Mr Kweku Awortwi, the Chief Executive Officer of the VRA, made a 115 per cent rise in tariffs, while Mr Charles Darku of GRIDCo, which does the transmission, asked for a 173 per cent rise. Mr Cephas Gakpo of the ECG, the distribution company that comes into regular contact with the consuming public, made demand for a 105 per cent rise at current rates.
All the chief executives defended their positions with facts and figures which painted a gloomy picture of the power supply situation in the country in the future. The ECG says it will need at least US$180 million to meet its annual investment in order to meet the growing need for electricity in the country. Mr Gakpo said at current rates, the ECG was able to internally generate only US$30 million annually to support its capital investment projects, with the explanation that that amount could not satisfy the seven per cent annual demand growth for energy of the country.
On the part of GRIDCo, Mr Darku explained that the peak power demand in Accra had grown from about 110 megawatts in 1990 to about 400 megawatts as of last year. He said the transformer capacity of Accra, which is about 415, is almost exhausted. This demands a capital investment programme to cater for the construction of transmission lines and substations, the installation of transformers and substation equipment and the provision of tools for maintenance and operations.
Enter the Public Utilities Regulatory Commission (PURC), the body that acts as a buffer between consumers and service providers. The PURC admitted receiving proposals from the three service providers but it was unable to approve them for several reasons. Its main concern, however, was that the three service providers had not exhibited enough efficiency in their operations; otherwise there could have been savings to reduce cost.
Again, the PURC argued that in 2007 it approved a 35 per cent tariff increase for the VRA on the understanding that it would generate 65 per cent of power from hydro and 35 per cent from thermal. Instead, the VRA generated 75 per cent from hydro and 25 per cent thermal and so to it the VRA had made enough money to sustain its operations.
The position of the PURC can be understood, especially from the point of view of consumers who want good and efficient service at a reasonable price. Where these are lacking, there is a weak argument for increase in tariffs. It can also be argued that the service providers cannot deny that there are administrative and operational bottlenecks within their systems that can impede smooth and cost-effective delivery of services.
These notwithstanding, there are some basic truths that we cannot run away from.
One, expansion over the years failed to match increase in population and for that matter increase in demand for electricity for domestic, commercial and industrial use.
Two, a lot of the equipment of these service providers are not only old and obsolete but also dangerous for service delivery, taking cognisance of the fact that electricity is a dangerous energy and the replacement of this equipment is capital intensive.
Three, the default rate is very high. Incidentally, most of the defaulters are government institutions which the ECG and the VRA in particular find difficult to deal with. It is the responsibility of the government to pay its due and meet its obligations, and then the service providers can proceed from there.
Four, not only is our population expanding; the economy is also growing and will even experience phenomenal growth when the oil and gas industry comes mainstream. Naturally the demand for power will increase.
Five, the Nigerian gas we have all been waiting for has so far proved elusive, which means the VRA will continue to rely on crude oil imports to operate its plants. The cedi/dollar rate is not in our favour and, therefore, to continue to pretend that everything is all right will mean postponing doomsday which will come with cataclysmic consequences.
It is, therefore, necessary to do a balancing act. While ensuring administrative and operational discipline, it is also prudent that the PURC sits down with the service providers to come to a reasonable compromise for the sake of adequate and efficient power supply. The three institutions cannot all be wrong at the same time and these are highly technical institutions that cannot just take things for granted.
The PURC may be making an argument in favour of consumers for now, but what about tomorrow when there is no power even to pay for? I heard Nana Owusu-Afare, the President of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), saying that the association would prefer constant delivery of power at a cost to an erratic, irregular and sometimes no power system which, in the long run, becomes more expensive to industry.
That is the issue confronting us. Efficient and regular power delivery as against low tariffs — which comes first? Remember, when the last light goes off, there will be no tariffs to pay.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Who will cast the first stone at Ansabah?
By Kofi Akordor
I never had the privilege of listening directly to what I will describe as the ‘confessions’ of Ebenezer Ato Sam, alias Baby Ansabah, on how he fabricated stories, which he knew very well to be untrue, for political, monetary and other favours.
What is common knowledge now is that Ansabah’s confession has attracted wild and general condemnation from many and brought into question the professional integrity of journalists and how they are contributing to the shaping of the political culture of this country.
Some people may not admit it, but the truth is that much as we may stand on the rooftops to condemn Ebenezer Ato Sam, who has decided, by some strange reasons, to be known in media circles as Baby Ansabah, his case is just a graphic picture of the criminality, vile and vicious propaganda and the immorality that we have introduced into our politics and media practice.
If our politicians were to play it straight according to the rules, if they were sincere about their pledges to turn around the fortunes of this country and make the citizens happier and more comfortable, there would not be any fertile ground for people such as Ansabah to germinate, let alone flourish. Indeed the Baby Ansabahs in the media would have been irrelevant
There is no doubt that the media are a powerful and important tool that drive the wheels of democracy. That is why it is very easy to detect the first and commonest signs of dictatorship as the absence of media freedom which epitomises lack of freedom of expression.
The media can also leave powerful images in the minds of people. That is why people in powerful positions, whether in business or politics, or people aspiring to capture power or dislodge others from power and control people, will seek solace in the comfortable bosom of the media to set the agenda rolling.
In Ghana, our politicians, for some strange reason, have chosen to use the media not to propagate their ideas, ideals and strengths to win the confidence and support of the people but rather destroy their opponents. So some have established their own newspapers, radio and television stations not to do journalism but pure propaganda. Others have found it more convenient to form cells within the media fraternity to do the hatchet work for them and for which they are prepared to offer anything, from huge sums of money, vehicles, houses and the privilege of going on overseas trips.
We may forget so soon, but if we can recall some of the things that were said on the various radio and television stations or published in the newspapers in 2008 when the presidential and parliamentary elections were approaching their climax, we could see the hidden hands of politicians bent on winning power by all means, fair or foul, using people who described themselves as journalists.
Why, for the sake of attaining or retaining political power, should we present demagogues, mob rousers, people with motives that are anything but honourable, people without any proven professional competence as heroes and even as deserving national awards?
Why should politicians contract people purposely to join phone-in programmes to insult or vilify political opponents, tell lies about others and incite people to violence? Why should we make these serial callers, as they proudly want to be known, feel important?
In our recent history, some of these serial callers have assumed roles as show hosts and infiltrated journalism.
The media are supposed to light the path for the people. They are to serve as the voice of the voiceless and set the agenda for national development. They are to put governments on their toes and make public office holders accountable to the people. That is why they are often referred to as the Fourth Estate of the Realm.
Ghana has celebrated 52 years of independence without any remarkable achievement, at least compared to others in the same group. And that is the challenge to journalists in the country. We are still debating the best educational system for our children who have virtually become guinea pigs in the hands of confused politicians who cannot tell their right from left.
With all the good things we have heard over the years, our health facilities are poor and incapable of delivering good health to the people. We still import tonnes and tonnes of food items annually, while we have large tracts of fertile land. Almost all our industries have collapsed and the country has been turned into a giant supermarket for imported new and junk items. The textile industry as we know, is probably the worst hit.
These and many others are the real issues confronting us and it is for the media to highlight them constantly and engage politicians to focus on national development.
But the media cannot operate in isolation. That, however, does not mean journalists should go to bed with politicians and other public office holders for personal aggrandisement, at the expense of their professional dictates and the well-being of the majority of the people.
If the media decide to make themselves appendages of other institutions of state, they will forfeit their mandate as the fourth estate and naturally their ability to play interventionist role on behalf of the people.
Yes, there are many journalists in the country who, against all odds, are doing their best to deliver their mandate as the eyes of the people, the voice of the voiceless, saying what must be said and generally making sure that this country moves from dependency and subservience to a fully independent status. Unfortunately, the noisy empty barrels and those who fabricate stories are more in the minds of the public and have clouded the good works of the rest.
As someone put it, Ansabah may be an embarrassment to himself, but his case is an indictment on a media that are gradually losing focus and rendering themselves an easy tool to be manipulated by those who have more to gain and less to lose in the hands of a docile and corrupt media.
The Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) has embarked on what could only be a self-redemption exercise by referring Ansabah to its Ethics and Disciplinary Committee.
But is the association standing on a solid ground? How many members, including the executives, can stand aside or cast the first stone for not having fabricated stories in the past? Remember the Hit List? How many of them have not benefited from the largesse of politicians in the form of cash, vehicles, houses and many other favours in kind for either suppressing vital information or fabricating others for personal gain, much against the ethics of the profession? I pray members of the association do not behave like vultures who swoop on one of their kind who is now lifeless.
To some of us, Ansabah was not only confessing but also lamenting for going down in the mud, without recognition and reward as others. If only others will also confess!
Ansabah stands accused, but he will not be in the dock alone. The media in Ghana are generally on trial because in the last few years, since the inception of the Fourth Republic, many journalists have done more politics than journalism and they did crude and immoral politics. It is time journalists did some soul-searching and salvage their professional image.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
I never had the privilege of listening directly to what I will describe as the ‘confessions’ of Ebenezer Ato Sam, alias Baby Ansabah, on how he fabricated stories, which he knew very well to be untrue, for political, monetary and other favours.
What is common knowledge now is that Ansabah’s confession has attracted wild and general condemnation from many and brought into question the professional integrity of journalists and how they are contributing to the shaping of the political culture of this country.
Some people may not admit it, but the truth is that much as we may stand on the rooftops to condemn Ebenezer Ato Sam, who has decided, by some strange reasons, to be known in media circles as Baby Ansabah, his case is just a graphic picture of the criminality, vile and vicious propaganda and the immorality that we have introduced into our politics and media practice.
If our politicians were to play it straight according to the rules, if they were sincere about their pledges to turn around the fortunes of this country and make the citizens happier and more comfortable, there would not be any fertile ground for people such as Ansabah to germinate, let alone flourish. Indeed the Baby Ansabahs in the media would have been irrelevant
There is no doubt that the media are a powerful and important tool that drive the wheels of democracy. That is why it is very easy to detect the first and commonest signs of dictatorship as the absence of media freedom which epitomises lack of freedom of expression.
The media can also leave powerful images in the minds of people. That is why people in powerful positions, whether in business or politics, or people aspiring to capture power or dislodge others from power and control people, will seek solace in the comfortable bosom of the media to set the agenda rolling.
In Ghana, our politicians, for some strange reason, have chosen to use the media not to propagate their ideas, ideals and strengths to win the confidence and support of the people but rather destroy their opponents. So some have established their own newspapers, radio and television stations not to do journalism but pure propaganda. Others have found it more convenient to form cells within the media fraternity to do the hatchet work for them and for which they are prepared to offer anything, from huge sums of money, vehicles, houses and the privilege of going on overseas trips.
We may forget so soon, but if we can recall some of the things that were said on the various radio and television stations or published in the newspapers in 2008 when the presidential and parliamentary elections were approaching their climax, we could see the hidden hands of politicians bent on winning power by all means, fair or foul, using people who described themselves as journalists.
Why, for the sake of attaining or retaining political power, should we present demagogues, mob rousers, people with motives that are anything but honourable, people without any proven professional competence as heroes and even as deserving national awards?
Why should politicians contract people purposely to join phone-in programmes to insult or vilify political opponents, tell lies about others and incite people to violence? Why should we make these serial callers, as they proudly want to be known, feel important?
In our recent history, some of these serial callers have assumed roles as show hosts and infiltrated journalism.
The media are supposed to light the path for the people. They are to serve as the voice of the voiceless and set the agenda for national development. They are to put governments on their toes and make public office holders accountable to the people. That is why they are often referred to as the Fourth Estate of the Realm.
Ghana has celebrated 52 years of independence without any remarkable achievement, at least compared to others in the same group. And that is the challenge to journalists in the country. We are still debating the best educational system for our children who have virtually become guinea pigs in the hands of confused politicians who cannot tell their right from left.
With all the good things we have heard over the years, our health facilities are poor and incapable of delivering good health to the people. We still import tonnes and tonnes of food items annually, while we have large tracts of fertile land. Almost all our industries have collapsed and the country has been turned into a giant supermarket for imported new and junk items. The textile industry as we know, is probably the worst hit.
These and many others are the real issues confronting us and it is for the media to highlight them constantly and engage politicians to focus on national development.
But the media cannot operate in isolation. That, however, does not mean journalists should go to bed with politicians and other public office holders for personal aggrandisement, at the expense of their professional dictates and the well-being of the majority of the people.
If the media decide to make themselves appendages of other institutions of state, they will forfeit their mandate as the fourth estate and naturally their ability to play interventionist role on behalf of the people.
Yes, there are many journalists in the country who, against all odds, are doing their best to deliver their mandate as the eyes of the people, the voice of the voiceless, saying what must be said and generally making sure that this country moves from dependency and subservience to a fully independent status. Unfortunately, the noisy empty barrels and those who fabricate stories are more in the minds of the public and have clouded the good works of the rest.
As someone put it, Ansabah may be an embarrassment to himself, but his case is an indictment on a media that are gradually losing focus and rendering themselves an easy tool to be manipulated by those who have more to gain and less to lose in the hands of a docile and corrupt media.
The Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) has embarked on what could only be a self-redemption exercise by referring Ansabah to its Ethics and Disciplinary Committee.
But is the association standing on a solid ground? How many members, including the executives, can stand aside or cast the first stone for not having fabricated stories in the past? Remember the Hit List? How many of them have not benefited from the largesse of politicians in the form of cash, vehicles, houses and many other favours in kind for either suppressing vital information or fabricating others for personal gain, much against the ethics of the profession? I pray members of the association do not behave like vultures who swoop on one of their kind who is now lifeless.
To some of us, Ansabah was not only confessing but also lamenting for going down in the mud, without recognition and reward as others. If only others will also confess!
Ansabah stands accused, but he will not be in the dock alone. The media in Ghana are generally on trial because in the last few years, since the inception of the Fourth Republic, many journalists have done more politics than journalism and they did crude and immoral politics. It is time journalists did some soul-searching and salvage their professional image.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
What is at the Ministry of Youth and Sports?
By Kofi Akordor
There was a gasp of surprise, or was it disbelief? Some even contemptuously questioned the wisdom of the President in sending a woman to that ministry. Why that woman? They even querried.
Being assigned to any ministry with sports as part of its portfolio comes with its peculiar challenge, not because of workload. A ministry with sports has a reputation which many with clear conscience, who stand for the truth, who want things done the right way, would not want to share. It is a ministry where those who know its intricacies and intrigues, welcome ministers sent there with scepticism, fear, suspicion or joy, depending on the outlook, intention, disposition or agenda of the person or group making the observation.
All these added to the turbulence on the minds of many when the President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, named Honourable Akua Sena Dansua, the Member of Parliament for North Dayi in the Volta Region, as the new Minister of Youth and Sports.
There are those who are genuinely concerned for a good reason and wish that the new minister succeeds and comes out unscathed where others went and made a hasty and sad exit. There are also the mischievous and doomsday people of course, who prefer to celebrate what they consider to be failure and not success.
For many, the story of the ministry of sports is well known. For the sake of those who may still not know, in 2001, a young man called Mallam Yusif Issa, was plucked from nowhere and made the Minister of Education, Science and Sports. Barely three months later, Mallam Issa became the first casualty of the Kufuor Administration, when he was booted out of office for not accounting for US$26,000 meant as bonus for players of the senior national football team, the Black Stars, who were to defend the national flag in a World Cup qualifier in The Sudan.
The truth was never known, but there were rumours that Mallam Issa was set up by officials of the ministry. This was vehemently denied by the officials. Whatever the case, the ministry gained notoriety for shady deals masterminded by some untouchables who have entrenched themselves in some impregnable fortresses.
In 2009, Alhaji Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, the young Member of Parliament for Asawase, assumed office as Minister of Youth and Sports. Remember, Sports is always looking for fresh partners. The new minister plunged into business with all the vigour and enthusiasm, powered by youthful exhuberance.
By some strange coincidence, three months later, just like in the case of Mallam Issa, Alhaji Mubarak ran into turbulence. His charges, among others, were that, he had used or rather misused his office to transport an unauthorised person at state expense on two occasions to Germany and Cote d’Ivoire. He was also accused of a large appetite for the consumption of large quantities of ching-chinga, a local delicacy of spiced, grilled meat.
Alhaji Mubarak’s tribulations did not end there. He was accused of embarking on unbridled buying spree involving baby nappies and other such things. He also did not escape the charge of not accounting for money given to him. Alhaji Mubarak sadly made a premature exit when he resigned his post.
There are common strands in the Mallam Issa and Alhaji Mubarak cases. They are both young and both promised to clear the stables and bring financial sanity to the sports ministry. Both never stayed long enough to carry out their missions. In fact both were consumed by allegations of fraud and corruption, the two evils they pledged to stamp out at the ministry.
So what was her reaction when she first heard of her new portfolio, I asked Honourable Dansua. Shock! Shock because she was not expecting a change in portfolio now, having set a cracking pace at the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs, where she had generally performed well and gearing up to consolidate ground and put a lot of her programmes and policies into action. That was why she thought this reshuffle should have passed by her.
Second, the new portfolio was a great surprise. She felt in the event of any change, she would be considered for a position her professional training and disposition could easily accommodate, say the Ministry of Information, being a professional journalist or the leadership of the House, where she is a three-term member. All the same, the President being the team leader knows best. She has, therefore, embraced the challenge, determined to succeed and prepare the ground for other women to tread in future without fear of failure.
When I suggested the idea that her new appointment might be a trap for self-destruction, judging from the experience of some others before her, Honourable Dansua was of the strong view that her choice as the first female Minister of the Ministry of Youth and Sports is an affirmation of faith and confidence in the ability of women by President Mills generally and in her personal qualities.
As to how she is going to cope with a ministry that has gained notoriety for swallowing its ministers, Honourable Dansua said until she gets there, she would not know what are those demons that have been haunting people there. However, one thing is certain. She is going to be a team leader who will use the services of all the human resources available to build up the image of the ministry. In the same vein, she would expect others, especially the technical staff, to exhibit honesty, transparency, absolute support and co-operation so that collectively they could build a good image for sports in Ghana and beyond.
She said rightly or wrongly, the ministry had a bad image in the eyes of the public and it was their collective responsibility to correct that perception and build a positive image for the ministry.
Her first task would be to organise an open forum and put her agenda on the table and would equally expect an open and frank response from all stakeholders. In her opinion, what may be deemed a failure of an individual minister is actually a failure of all those who have anything to do with the administration of the ministry. On those intrigued with the idea of a woman going to head a dreaded ministry, Honourable Dansua said the problem was not about gender, but the institution itself which needed major reforms. So it is possible that where many men went and failed, a woman will go and succeed.
On her vision for the ministry, Honourable Dansua said it was not about sports or football alone. Preparing the youth for the future is the responsibility of the ministry. She made reference to the age-old adage that: “The devil finds work for idle hands”, and gave the assurance that she would fine-tune existing programmes and design new ones that would respond to the needs of the youth. “When the youth are unemployed, they tend to engage in bad habits such as stealing, robbery, Sakawa and many such evil practices,” she noted, and pledged to make the development of the youth the focal point of her policy at the ministry.
In the same way she would popularise other sporting disciplines such as swimming, tennis, women’s football and help in the revival of student teams like the Academicals which served as a nursing ground for the national football team in the past.
Honourable Akua Dansua is going to be new at the Ministry of Youth and Sports, but she is more than a matured wine on the political landscape. A product of Mawuli School, the Ghana Institute of Journalism, the School of Communication Studies of the University of Ghana, Legon, and the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Honourable Dansua was into mainstream journalism for many years before veering into active politics in 1997, when she was made the District Chief Executive for Kpando, a position she held with distinction till 2001, when the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government gave way to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) after the 2000 election.
From 2001 to date, Honourable Dansua has been a Member of Parliament where she has held many leadership positions. They include Second Deputy Minority Whip (January 2004-January 2009) and First Deputy Majority Whip (January 7-February 13, 2009). She also represented Parliament on several local and international committees and travelled widely to several countries on many parliamentary missions.
On February 13, 2009, Honourable Dansua assumed office as Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs, a position she held to the admiration of many until last Monday, when President Mills appointed her to the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
From her humble beginnings, Honourable Dansua has piled up years of hard work and experience and is, therefore, confident that with the support of all well-meaning Ghanaians she is not going to fail and prayed for the co-operation of all.
“I have the professional competence, political experience, the independence of mind and the neutrality needed in a multi-faceted environment such as the Ministry of Youth and Sports to handle the ministry and turn the place around,” she declared with optimism, “and I see my new role not only as a personal challenge, but to all of us women who want the world to know and accept that we are more than capable in whatever challenge we are confronted with.”
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
By Kofi Akordor
There was a gasp of surprise, or was it disbelief? Some even contemptuously questioned the wisdom of the President in sending a woman to that ministry. Why that woman? They even querried.
Being assigned to any ministry with sports as part of its portfolio comes with its peculiar challenge, not because of workload. A ministry with sports has a reputation which many with clear conscience, who stand for the truth, who want things done the right way, would not want to share. It is a ministry where those who know its intricacies and intrigues, welcome ministers sent there with scepticism, fear, suspicion or joy, depending on the outlook, intention, disposition or agenda of the person or group making the observation.
All these added to the turbulence on the minds of many when the President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, named Honourable Akua Sena Dansua, the Member of Parliament for North Dayi in the Volta Region, as the new Minister of Youth and Sports.
There are those who are genuinely concerned for a good reason and wish that the new minister succeeds and comes out unscathed where others went and made a hasty and sad exit. There are also the mischievous and doomsday people of course, who prefer to celebrate what they consider to be failure and not success.
For many, the story of the ministry of sports is well known. For the sake of those who may still not know, in 2001, a young man called Mallam Yusif Issa, was plucked from nowhere and made the Minister of Education, Science and Sports. Barely three months later, Mallam Issa became the first casualty of the Kufuor Administration, when he was booted out of office for not accounting for US$26,000 meant as bonus for players of the senior national football team, the Black Stars, who were to defend the national flag in a World Cup qualifier in The Sudan.
The truth was never known, but there were rumours that Mallam Issa was set up by officials of the ministry. This was vehemently denied by the officials. Whatever the case, the ministry gained notoriety for shady deals masterminded by some untouchables who have entrenched themselves in some impregnable fortresses.
In 2009, Alhaji Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, the young Member of Parliament for Asawase, assumed office as Minister of Youth and Sports. Remember, Sports is always looking for fresh partners. The new minister plunged into business with all the vigour and enthusiasm, powered by youthful exhuberance.
By some strange coincidence, three months later, just like in the case of Mallam Issa, Alhaji Mubarak ran into turbulence. His charges, among others, were that, he had used or rather misused his office to transport an unauthorised person at state expense on two occasions to Germany and Cote d’Ivoire. He was also accused of a large appetite for the consumption of large quantities of ching-chinga, a local delicacy of spiced, grilled meat.
Alhaji Mubarak’s tribulations did not end there. He was accused of embarking on unbridled buying spree involving baby nappies and other such things. He also did not escape the charge of not accounting for money given to him. Alhaji Mubarak sadly made a premature exit when he resigned his post.
There are common strands in the Mallam Issa and Alhaji Mubarak cases. They are both young and both promised to clear the stables and bring financial sanity to the sports ministry. Both never stayed long enough to carry out their missions. In fact both were consumed by allegations of fraud and corruption, the two evils they pledged to stamp out at the ministry.
So what was her reaction when she first heard of her new portfolio, I asked Honourable Dansua. Shock! Shock because she was not expecting a change in portfolio now, having set a cracking pace at the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs, where she had generally performed well and gearing up to consolidate ground and put a lot of her programmes and policies into action. That was why she thought this reshuffle should have passed by her.
Second, the new portfolio was a great surprise. She felt in the event of any change, she would be considered for a position her professional training and disposition could easily accommodate, say the Ministry of Information, being a professional journalist or the leadership of the House, where she is a three-term member. All the same, the President being the team leader knows best. She has, therefore, embraced the challenge, determined to succeed and prepare the ground for other women to tread in future without fear of failure.
When I suggested the idea that her new appointment might be a trap for self-destruction, judging from the experience of some others before her, Honourable Dansua is of the strong view that her choice as the first female Minister of the Ministry of Youth and Sports is an affirmation of faith and confidence in the ability of women by President Mills generally and in her personal qualities.
As to how she is going to cope with a ministry that has gained notoriety for swallowing its ministers, Honourable Dansua said until she gets there, she would not know what are those demons that have been haunting people there. However, one thing is certain. She is going to be a team leader who will use the services of all the human resources available to build up the image of the ministry. In the same vein, she would expect others, especially the technical staff, to exhibit honesty, transparency, absolute support and co-operation so that collectively they could build a good image for sports in Ghana and beyond.
She said rightly or wrongly, the ministry had a bad image in the eyes of the public and it was their collective responsibility to correct that perception and build a positive image for the ministry.
Her first task would be to organise an open forum and put her agenda on the table and would equally expect an open and frank response from all stakeholders. In her opinion, what may be deemed a failure of an individual minister is actually a failure of all those who have anything to do with the administration of the ministry. On those intrigued with the idea of a woman going to head a dreaded ministry, Honourable Dansua said the problem was not about gender, but the institution itself which needed major reforms. So it is possible that where many men went and failed, a woman will go and succeed.
On her vision for the ministry, Honourable Dansua said it was not about sports or football alone. Preparing the youth for the future is the responsibility of the ministry. She made reference to the age-old adage that: “The devil finds work for idle hands”, and gave the assurance that she would fine-tune existing programmes and design new ones that would respond to the needs of the youth. “When the youth are unemployed, they tend to engage in bad habits such as stealing, robbery, Sakawa and many such evil practices,” she noted, and pledged to make the development of the youth the focal point of her policy at the ministry.
In the same way she would popularise other sporting disciplines such as swimming, tennis, women’s football and help in the revival of student teams like the Academicals which served as a nursing ground for the national football team in the past.
Honourable Akua Dansua is going to be new at the Ministry of Youth and Sports, but she is more than a matured wine on the political landscape. A product of Mawuli School, the Ghana Institute of Journalism, the School of Communication Studies of the University of Ghana, Legon, and the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Honourable Dansua was into mainstream journalism for many years before veering into active politics in 1997, when she was made the District Chief Executive for Kpando, a position she held with distinction till 2001, when the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government gave way to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) after the 2000 election.
From 2001 to date, Honourable Dansua has been a Member of Parliament where she has held many leadership positions. They include Second Deputy Minority Whip (January 2004-January 2009) and First Deputy Majority Whip (January 7-February 13, 2009). She also represented Parliament on several local and international committees and travelled widely to several countries on many parliamentary missions.
On February 13, 2009, Honourable Dansua assumed office as Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs, a position she held to the admiration of many until last Monday, when President Mills appointed her to the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
From her humble beginnings, Honourable Dansua has piled up years of hard work and experience and is, therefore, confident that with the support of all well-meaning Ghanaians she is not going to fail and prayed for the co-operation of all.
“I have the professional competence, political experience, the independence of mind and the neutrality needed in a multi-faceted environment such as the Ministry of Youth and Sports to handle the ministry and turn the place around,” she declared with optimism, “and I see my new role not only as a personal challenge, but to all of us women who want the world to know and accept that we are more than capable in whatever challenge we are confronted with.”
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
By Kofi Akordor
There was a gasp of surprise, or was it disbelief? Some even contemptuously questioned the wisdom of the President in sending a woman to that ministry. Why that woman? They even querried.
Being assigned to any ministry with sports as part of its portfolio comes with its peculiar challenge, not because of workload. A ministry with sports has a reputation which many with clear conscience, who stand for the truth, who want things done the right way, would not want to share. It is a ministry where those who know its intricacies and intrigues, welcome ministers sent there with scepticism, fear, suspicion or joy, depending on the outlook, intention, disposition or agenda of the person or group making the observation.
All these added to the turbulence on the minds of many when the President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, named Honourable Akua Sena Dansua, the Member of Parliament for North Dayi in the Volta Region, as the new Minister of Youth and Sports.
There are those who are genuinely concerned for a good reason and wish that the new minister succeeds and comes out unscathed where others went and made a hasty and sad exit. There are also the mischievous and doomsday people of course, who prefer to celebrate what they consider to be failure and not success.
For many, the story of the ministry of sports is well known. For the sake of those who may still not know, in 2001, a young man called Mallam Yusif Issa, was plucked from nowhere and made the Minister of Education, Science and Sports. Barely three months later, Mallam Issa became the first casualty of the Kufuor Administration, when he was booted out of office for not accounting for US$26,000 meant as bonus for players of the senior national football team, the Black Stars, who were to defend the national flag in a World Cup qualifier in The Sudan.
The truth was never known, but there were rumours that Mallam Issa was set up by officials of the ministry. This was vehemently denied by the officials. Whatever the case, the ministry gained notoriety for shady deals masterminded by some untouchables who have entrenched themselves in some impregnable fortresses.
In 2009, Alhaji Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, the young Member of Parliament for Asawase, assumed office as Minister of Youth and Sports. Remember, Sports is always looking for fresh partners. The new minister plunged into business with all the vigour and enthusiasm, powered by youthful exhuberance.
By some strange coincidence, three months later, just like in the case of Mallam Issa, Alhaji Mubarak ran into turbulence. His charges, among others, were that, he had used or rather misused his office to transport an unauthorised person at state expense on two occasions to Germany and Cote d’Ivoire. He was also accused of a large appetite for the consumption of large quantities of ching-chinga, a local delicacy of spiced, grilled meat.
Alhaji Mubarak’s tribulations did not end there. He was accused of embarking on unbridled buying spree involving baby nappies and other such things. He also did not escape the charge of not accounting for money given to him. Alhaji Mubarak sadly made a premature exit when he resigned his post.
There are common strands in the Mallam Issa and Alhaji Mubarak cases. They are both young and both promised to clear the stables and bring financial sanity to the sports ministry. Both never stayed long enough to carry out their missions. In fact both were consumed by allegations of fraud and corruption, the two evils they pledged to stamp out at the ministry.
So what was her reaction when she first heard of her new portfolio, I asked Honourable Dansua. Shock! Shock because she was not expecting a change in portfolio now, having set a cracking pace at the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs, where she had generally performed well and gearing up to consolidate ground and put a lot of her programmes and policies into action. That was why she thought this reshuffle should have passed by her.
Second, the new portfolio was a great surprise. She felt in the event of any change, she would be considered for a position her professional training and disposition could easily accommodate, say the Ministry of Information, being a professional journalist or the leadership of the House, where she is a three-term member. All the same, the President being the team leader knows best. She has, therefore, embraced the challenge, determined to succeed and prepare the ground for other women to tread in future without fear of failure.
When I suggested the idea that her new appointment might be a trap for self-destruction, judging from the experience of some others before her, Honourable Dansua is of the strong view that her choice as the first female Minister of the Ministry of Youth and Sports is an affirmation of faith and confidence in the ability of women by President Mills generally and in her personal qualities.
As to how she is going to cope with a ministry that has gained notoriety for swallowing its ministers, Honourable Dansua said until she gets there, she would not know what are those demons that have been haunting people there. However, one thing is certain. She is going to be a team leader who will use the services of all the human resources available to build up the image of the ministry. In the same vein, she would expect others, especially the technical staff, to exhibit honesty, transparency, absolute support and co-operation so that collectively they could build a good image for sports in Ghana and beyond.
She said rightly or wrongly, the ministry had a bad image in the eyes of the public and it was their collective responsibility to correct that perception and build a positive image for the ministry.
Her first task would be to organise an open forum and put her agenda on the table and would equally expect an open and frank response from all stakeholders. In her opinion, what may be deemed a failure of an individual minister is actually a failure of all those who have anything to do with the administration of the ministry. On those intrigued with the idea of a woman going to head a dreaded ministry, Honourable Dansua said the problem was not about gender, but the institution itself which needed major reforms. So it is possible that where many men went and failed, a woman will go and succeed.
On her vision for the ministry, Honourable Dansua said it was not about sports or football alone. Preparing the youth for the future is the responsibility of the ministry. She made reference to the age-old adage that: “The devil finds work for idle hands”, and gave the assurance that she would fine-tune existing programmes and design new ones that would respond to the needs of the youth. “When the youth are unemployed, they tend to engage in bad habits such as stealing, robbery, Sakawa and many such evil practices,” she noted, and pledged to make the development of the youth the focal point of her policy at the ministry.
In the same way she would popularise other sporting disciplines such as swimming, tennis, women’s football and help in the revival of student teams like the Academicals which served as a nursing ground for the national football team in the past.
Honourable Akua Dansua is going to be new at the Ministry of Youth and Sports, but she is more than a matured wine on the political landscape. A product of Mawuli School, the Ghana Institute of Journalism, the School of Communication Studies of the University of Ghana, Legon, and the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Honourable Dansua was into mainstream journalism for many years before veering into active politics in 1997, when she was made the District Chief Executive for Kpando, a position she held with distinction till 2001, when the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government gave way to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) after the 2000 election.
From 2001 to date, Honourable Dansua has been a Member of Parliament where she has held many leadership positions. They include Second Deputy Minority Whip (January 2004-January 2009) and First Deputy Majority Whip (January 7-February 13, 2009). She also represented Parliament on several local and international committees and travelled widely to several countries on many parliamentary missions.
On February 13, 2009, Honourable Dansua assumed office as Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs, a position she held to the admiration of many until last Monday, when President Mills appointed her to the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
From her humble beginnings, Honourable Dansua has piled up years of hard work and experience and is, therefore, confident that with the support of all well-meaning Ghanaians she is not going to fail and prayed for the co-operation of all.
“I have the professional competence, political experience, the independence of mind and the neutrality needed in a multi-faceted environment such as the Ministry of Youth and Sports to handle the ministry and turn the place around,” she declared with optimism, “and I see my new role not only as a personal challenge, but to all of us women who want the world to know and accept that we are more than capable in whatever challenge we are confronted with.”
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
There was a gasp of surprise, or was it disbelief? Some even contemptuously questioned the wisdom of the President in sending a woman to that ministry. Why that woman? They even querried.
Being assigned to any ministry with sports as part of its portfolio comes with its peculiar challenge, not because of workload. A ministry with sports has a reputation which many with clear conscience, who stand for the truth, who want things done the right way, would not want to share. It is a ministry where those who know its intricacies and intrigues, welcome ministers sent there with scepticism, fear, suspicion or joy, depending on the outlook, intention, disposition or agenda of the person or group making the observation.
All these added to the turbulence on the minds of many when the President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, named Honourable Akua Sena Dansua, the Member of Parliament for North Dayi in the Volta Region, as the new Minister of Youth and Sports.
There are those who are genuinely concerned for a good reason and wish that the new minister succeeds and comes out unscathed where others went and made a hasty and sad exit. There are also the mischievous and doomsday people of course, who prefer to celebrate what they consider to be failure and not success.
For many, the story of the ministry of sports is well known. For the sake of those who may still not know, in 2001, a young man called Mallam Yusif Issa, was plucked from nowhere and made the Minister of Education, Science and Sports. Barely three months later, Mallam Issa became the first casualty of the Kufuor Administration, when he was booted out of office for not accounting for US$26,000 meant as bonus for players of the senior national football team, the Black Stars, who were to defend the national flag in a World Cup qualifier in The Sudan.
The truth was never known, but there were rumours that Mallam Issa was set up by officials of the ministry. This was vehemently denied by the officials. Whatever the case, the ministry gained notoriety for shady deals masterminded by some untouchables who have entrenched themselves in some impregnable fortresses.
In 2009, Alhaji Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, the young Member of Parliament for Asawase, assumed office as Minister of Youth and Sports. Remember, Sports is always looking for fresh partners. The new minister plunged into business with all the vigour and enthusiasm, powered by youthful exhuberance.
By some strange coincidence, three months later, just like in the case of Mallam Issa, Alhaji Mubarak ran into turbulence. His charges, among others, were that, he had used or rather misused his office to transport an unauthorised person at state expense on two occasions to Germany and Cote d’Ivoire. He was also accused of a large appetite for the consumption of large quantities of ching-chinga, a local delicacy of spiced, grilled meat.
Alhaji Mubarak’s tribulations did not end there. He was accused of embarking on unbridled buying spree involving baby nappies and other such things. He also did not escape the charge of not accounting for money given to him. Alhaji Mubarak sadly made a premature exit when he resigned his post.
There are common strands in the Mallam Issa and Alhaji Mubarak cases. They are both young and both promised to clear the stables and bring financial sanity to the sports ministry. Both never stayed long enough to carry out their missions. In fact both were consumed by allegations of fraud and corruption, the two evils they pledged to stamp out at the ministry.
So what was her reaction when she first heard of her new portfolio, I asked Honourable Dansua. Shock! Shock because she was not expecting a change in portfolio now, having set a cracking pace at the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs, where she had generally performed well and gearing up to consolidate ground and put a lot of her programmes and policies into action. That was why she thought this reshuffle should have passed by her.
Second, the new portfolio was a great surprise. She felt in the event of any change, she would be considered for a position her professional training and disposition could easily accommodate, say the Ministry of Information, being a professional journalist or the leadership of the House, where she is a three-term member. All the same, the President being the team leader knows best. She has, therefore, embraced the challenge, determined to succeed and prepare the ground for other women to tread in future without fear of failure.
When I suggested the idea that her new appointment might be a trap for self-destruction, judging from the experience of some others before her, Honourable Dansua was of the strong view that her choice as the first female Minister of the Ministry of Youth and Sports is an affirmation of faith and confidence in the ability of women by President Mills generally and in her personal qualities.
As to how she is going to cope with a ministry that has gained notoriety for swallowing its ministers, Honourable Dansua said until she gets there, she would not know what are those demons that have been haunting people there. However, one thing is certain. She is going to be a team leader who will use the services of all the human resources available to build up the image of the ministry. In the same vein, she would expect others, especially the technical staff, to exhibit honesty, transparency, absolute support and co-operation so that collectively they could build a good image for sports in Ghana and beyond.
She said rightly or wrongly, the ministry had a bad image in the eyes of the public and it was their collective responsibility to correct that perception and build a positive image for the ministry.
Her first task would be to organise an open forum and put her agenda on the table and would equally expect an open and frank response from all stakeholders. In her opinion, what may be deemed a failure of an individual minister is actually a failure of all those who have anything to do with the administration of the ministry. On those intrigued with the idea of a woman going to head a dreaded ministry, Honourable Dansua said the problem was not about gender, but the institution itself which needed major reforms. So it is possible that where many men went and failed, a woman will go and succeed.
On her vision for the ministry, Honourable Dansua said it was not about sports or football alone. Preparing the youth for the future is the responsibility of the ministry. She made reference to the age-old adage that: “The devil finds work for idle hands”, and gave the assurance that she would fine-tune existing programmes and design new ones that would respond to the needs of the youth. “When the youth are unemployed, they tend to engage in bad habits such as stealing, robbery, Sakawa and many such evil practices,” she noted, and pledged to make the development of the youth the focal point of her policy at the ministry.
In the same way she would popularise other sporting disciplines such as swimming, tennis, women’s football and help in the revival of student teams like the Academicals which served as a nursing ground for the national football team in the past.
Honourable Akua Dansua is going to be new at the Ministry of Youth and Sports, but she is more than a matured wine on the political landscape. A product of Mawuli School, the Ghana Institute of Journalism, the School of Communication Studies of the University of Ghana, Legon, and the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Honourable Dansua was into mainstream journalism for many years before veering into active politics in 1997, when she was made the District Chief Executive for Kpando, a position she held with distinction till 2001, when the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government gave way to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) after the 2000 election.
From 2001 to date, Honourable Dansua has been a Member of Parliament where she has held many leadership positions. They include Second Deputy Minority Whip (January 2004-January 2009) and First Deputy Majority Whip (January 7-February 13, 2009). She also represented Parliament on several local and international committees and travelled widely to several countries on many parliamentary missions.
On February 13, 2009, Honourable Dansua assumed office as Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs, a position she held to the admiration of many until last Monday, when President Mills appointed her to the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
From her humble beginnings, Honourable Dansua has piled up years of hard work and experience and is, therefore, confident that with the support of all well-meaning Ghanaians she is not going to fail and prayed for the co-operation of all.
“I have the professional competence, political experience, the independence of mind and the neutrality needed in a multi-faceted environment such as the Ministry of Youth and Sports to handle the ministry and turn the place around,” she declared with optimism, “and I see my new role not only as a personal challenge, but to all of us women who want the world to know and accept that we are more than capable in whatever challenge we are confronted with.”
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
By Kofi Akordor
There was a gasp of surprise, or was it disbelief? Some even contemptuously questioned the wisdom of the President in sending a woman to that ministry. Why that woman? They even querried.
Being assigned to any ministry with sports as part of its portfolio comes with its peculiar challenge, not because of workload. A ministry with sports has a reputation which many with clear conscience, who stand for the truth, who want things done the right way, would not want to share. It is a ministry where those who know its intricacies and intrigues, welcome ministers sent there with scepticism, fear, suspicion or joy, depending on the outlook, intention, disposition or agenda of the person or group making the observation.
All these added to the turbulence on the minds of many when the President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, named Honourable Akua Sena Dansua, the Member of Parliament for North Dayi in the Volta Region, as the new Minister of Youth and Sports.
There are those who are genuinely concerned for a good reason and wish that the new minister succeeds and comes out unscathed where others went and made a hasty and sad exit. There are also the mischievous and doomsday people of course, who prefer to celebrate what they consider to be failure and not success.
For many, the story of the ministry of sports is well known. For the sake of those who may still not know, in 2001, a young man called Mallam Yusif Issa, was plucked from nowhere and made the Minister of Education, Science and Sports. Barely three months later, Mallam Issa became the first casualty of the Kufuor Administration, when he was booted out of office for not accounting for US$26,000 meant as bonus for players of the senior national football team, the Black Stars, who were to defend the national flag in a World Cup qualifier in The Sudan.
The truth was never known, but there were rumours that Mallam Issa was set up by officials of the ministry. This was vehemently denied by the officials. Whatever the case, the ministry gained notoriety for shady deals masterminded by some untouchables who have entrenched themselves in some impregnable fortresses.
In 2009, Alhaji Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, the young Member of Parliament for Asawase, assumed office as Minister of Youth and Sports. Remember, Sports is always looking for fresh partners. The new minister plunged into business with all the vigour and enthusiasm, powered by youthful exhuberance.
By some strange coincidence, three months later, just like in the case of Mallam Issa, Alhaji Mubarak ran into turbulence. His charges, among others, were that, he had used or rather misused his office to transport an unauthorised person at state expense on two occasions to Germany and Cote d’Ivoire. He was also accused of a large appetite for the consumption of large quantities of ching-chinga, a local delicacy of spiced, grilled meat.
Alhaji Mubarak’s tribulations did not end there. He was accused of embarking on unbridled buying spree involving baby nappies and other such things. He also did not escape the charge of not accounting for money given to him. Alhaji Mubarak sadly made a premature exit when he resigned his post.
There are common strands in the Mallam Issa and Alhaji Mubarak cases. They are both young and both promised to clear the stables and bring financial sanity to the sports ministry. Both never stayed long enough to carry out their missions. In fact both were consumed by allegations of fraud and corruption, the two evils they pledged to stamp out at the ministry.
So what was her reaction when she first heard of her new portfolio, I asked Honourable Dansua. Shock! Shock because she was not expecting a change in portfolio now, having set a cracking pace at the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs, where she had generally performed well and gearing up to consolidate ground and put a lot of her programmes and policies into action. That was why she thought this reshuffle should have passed by her.
Second, the new portfolio was a great surprise. She felt in the event of any change, she would be considered for a position her professional training and disposition could easily accommodate, say the Ministry of Information, being a professional journalist or the leadership of the House, where she is a three-term member. All the same, the President being the team leader knows best. She has, therefore, embraced the challenge, determined to succeed and prepare the ground for other women to tread in future without fear of failure.
When I suggested the idea that her new appointment might be a trap for self-destruction, judging from the experience of some others before her, Honourable Dansua is of the strong view that her choice as the first female Minister of the Ministry of Youth and Sports is an affirmation of faith and confidence in the ability of women by President Mills generally and in her personal qualities.
As to how she is going to cope with a ministry that has gained notoriety for swallowing its ministers, Honourable Dansua said until she gets there, she would not know what are those demons that have been haunting people there. However, one thing is certain. She is going to be a team leader who will use the services of all the human resources available to build up the image of the ministry. In the same vein, she would expect others, especially the technical staff, to exhibit honesty, transparency, absolute support and co-operation so that collectively they could build a good image for sports in Ghana and beyond.
She said rightly or wrongly, the ministry had a bad image in the eyes of the public and it was their collective responsibility to correct that perception and build a positive image for the ministry.
Her first task would be to organise an open forum and put her agenda on the table and would equally expect an open and frank response from all stakeholders. In her opinion, what may be deemed a failure of an individual minister is actually a failure of all those who have anything to do with the administration of the ministry. On those intrigued with the idea of a woman going to head a dreaded ministry, Honourable Dansua said the problem was not about gender, but the institution itself which needed major reforms. So it is possible that where many men went and failed, a woman will go and succeed.
On her vision for the ministry, Honourable Dansua said it was not about sports or football alone. Preparing the youth for the future is the responsibility of the ministry. She made reference to the age-old adage that: “The devil finds work for idle hands”, and gave the assurance that she would fine-tune existing programmes and design new ones that would respond to the needs of the youth. “When the youth are unemployed, they tend to engage in bad habits such as stealing, robbery, Sakawa and many such evil practices,” she noted, and pledged to make the development of the youth the focal point of her policy at the ministry.
In the same way she would popularise other sporting disciplines such as swimming, tennis, women’s football and help in the revival of student teams like the Academicals which served as a nursing ground for the national football team in the past.
Honourable Akua Dansua is going to be new at the Ministry of Youth and Sports, but she is more than a matured wine on the political landscape. A product of Mawuli School, the Ghana Institute of Journalism, the School of Communication Studies of the University of Ghana, Legon, and the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Honourable Dansua was into mainstream journalism for many years before veering into active politics in 1997, when she was made the District Chief Executive for Kpando, a position she held with distinction till 2001, when the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government gave way to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) after the 2000 election.
From 2001 to date, Honourable Dansua has been a Member of Parliament where she has held many leadership positions. They include Second Deputy Minority Whip (January 2004-January 2009) and First Deputy Majority Whip (January 7-February 13, 2009). She also represented Parliament on several local and international committees and travelled widely to several countries on many parliamentary missions.
On February 13, 2009, Honourable Dansua assumed office as Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs, a position she held to the admiration of many until last Monday, when President Mills appointed her to the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
From her humble beginnings, Honourable Dansua has piled up years of hard work and experience and is, therefore, confident that with the support of all well-meaning Ghanaians she is not going to fail and prayed for the co-operation of all.
“I have the professional competence, political experience, the independence of mind and the neutrality needed in a multi-faceted environment such as the Ministry of Youth and Sports to handle the ministry and turn the place around,” she declared with optimism, “and I see my new role not only as a personal challenge, but to all of us women who want the world to know and accept that we are more than capable in whatever challenge we are confronted with.”
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
By Kofi Akordor
There was a gasp of surprise, or was it disbelief? Some even contemptuously questioned the wisdom of the President in sending a woman to that ministry. Why that woman? They even querried.
Being assigned to any ministry with sports as part of its portfolio comes with its peculiar challenge, not because of workload. A ministry with sports has a reputation which many with clear conscience, who stand for the truth, who want things done the right way, would not want to share. It is a ministry where those who know its intricacies and intrigues, welcome ministers sent there with scepticism, fear, suspicion or joy, depending on the outlook, intention, disposition or agenda of the person or group making the observation.
All these added to the turbulence on the minds of many when the President, Professor John Evans Atta Mills, named Honourable Akua Sena Dansua, the Member of Parliament for North Dayi in the Volta Region, as the new Minister of Youth and Sports.
There are those who are genuinely concerned for a good reason and wish that the new minister succeeds and comes out unscathed where others went and made a hasty and sad exit. There are also the mischievous and doomsday people of course, who prefer to celebrate what they consider to be failure and not success.
For many, the story of the ministry of sports is well known. For the sake of those who may still not know, in 2001, a young man called Mallam Yusif Issa, was plucked from nowhere and made the Minister of Education, Science and Sports. Barely three months later, Mallam Issa became the first casualty of the Kufuor Administration, when he was booted out of office for not accounting for US$26,000 meant as bonus for players of the senior national football team, the Black Stars, who were to defend the national flag in a World Cup qualifier in The Sudan.
The truth was never known, but there were rumours that Mallam Issa was set up by officials of the ministry. This was vehemently denied by the officials. Whatever the case, the ministry gained notoriety for shady deals masterminded by some untouchables who have entrenched themselves in some impregnable fortresses.
In 2009, Alhaji Mohammed Muntaka Mubarak, the young Member of Parliament for Asawase, assumed office as Minister of Youth and Sports. Remember, Sports is always looking for fresh partners. The new minister plunged into business with all the vigour and enthusiasm, powered by youthful exhuberance.
By some strange coincidence, three months later, just like in the case of Mallam Issa, Alhaji Mubarak ran into turbulence. His charges, among others, were that, he had used or rather misused his office to transport an unauthorised person at state expense on two occasions to Germany and Cote d’Ivoire. He was also accused of a large appetite for the consumption of large quantities of ching-chinga, a local delicacy of spiced, grilled meat.
Alhaji Mubarak’s tribulations did not end there. He was accused of embarking on unbridled buying spree involving baby nappies and other such things. He also did not escape the charge of not accounting for money given to him. Alhaji Mubarak sadly made a premature exit when he resigned his post.
There are common strands in the Mallam Issa and Alhaji Mubarak cases. They are both young and both promised to clear the stables and bring financial sanity to the sports ministry. Both never stayed long enough to carry out their missions. In fact both were consumed by allegations of fraud and corruption, the two evils they pledged to stamp out at the ministry.
So what was her reaction when she first heard of her new portfolio, I asked Honourable Dansua. Shock! Shock because she was not expecting a change in portfolio now, having set a cracking pace at the Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs, where she had generally performed well and gearing up to consolidate ground and put a lot of her programmes and policies into action. That was why she thought this reshuffle should have passed by her.
Second, the new portfolio was a great surprise. She felt in the event of any change, she would be considered for a position her professional training and disposition could easily accommodate, say the Ministry of Information, being a professional journalist or the leadership of the House, where she is a three-term member. All the same, the President being the team leader knows best. She has, therefore, embraced the challenge, determined to succeed and prepare the ground for other women to tread in future without fear of failure.
When I suggested the idea that her new appointment might be a trap for self-destruction, judging from the experience of some others before her, Honourable Dansua is of the strong view that her choice as the first female Minister of the Ministry of Youth and Sports is an affirmation of faith and confidence in the ability of women by President Mills generally and in her personal qualities.
As to how she is going to cope with a ministry that has gained notoriety for swallowing its ministers, Honourable Dansua said until she gets there, she would not know what are those demons that have been haunting people there. However, one thing is certain. She is going to be a team leader who will use the services of all the human resources available to build up the image of the ministry. In the same vein, she would expect others, especially the technical staff, to exhibit honesty, transparency, absolute support and co-operation so that collectively they could build a good image for sports in Ghana and beyond.
She said rightly or wrongly, the ministry had a bad image in the eyes of the public and it was their collective responsibility to correct that perception and build a positive image for the ministry.
Her first task would be to organise an open forum and put her agenda on the table and would equally expect an open and frank response from all stakeholders. In her opinion, what may be deemed a failure of an individual minister is actually a failure of all those who have anything to do with the administration of the ministry. On those intrigued with the idea of a woman going to head a dreaded ministry, Honourable Dansua said the problem was not about gender, but the institution itself which needed major reforms. So it is possible that where many men went and failed, a woman will go and succeed.
On her vision for the ministry, Honourable Dansua said it was not about sports or football alone. Preparing the youth for the future is the responsibility of the ministry. She made reference to the age-old adage that: “The devil finds work for idle hands”, and gave the assurance that she would fine-tune existing programmes and design new ones that would respond to the needs of the youth. “When the youth are unemployed, they tend to engage in bad habits such as stealing, robbery, Sakawa and many such evil practices,” she noted, and pledged to make the development of the youth the focal point of her policy at the ministry.
In the same way she would popularise other sporting disciplines such as swimming, tennis, women’s football and help in the revival of student teams like the Academicals which served as a nursing ground for the national football team in the past.
Honourable Akua Dansua is going to be new at the Ministry of Youth and Sports, but she is more than a matured wine on the political landscape. A product of Mawuli School, the Ghana Institute of Journalism, the School of Communication Studies of the University of Ghana, Legon, and the Ghana Institute of Management and Public Administration, Honourable Dansua was into mainstream journalism for many years before veering into active politics in 1997, when she was made the District Chief Executive for Kpando, a position she held with distinction till 2001, when the National Democratic Congress (NDC) government gave way to the New Patriotic Party (NPP) after the 2000 election.
From 2001 to date, Honourable Dansua has been a Member of Parliament where she has held many leadership positions. They include Second Deputy Minority Whip (January 2004-January 2009) and First Deputy Majority Whip (January 7-February 13, 2009). She also represented Parliament on several local and international committees and travelled widely to several countries on many parliamentary missions.
On February 13, 2009, Honourable Dansua assumed office as Minister of Women and Children’s Affairs, a position she held to the admiration of many until last Monday, when President Mills appointed her to the Ministry of Youth and Sports.
From her humble beginnings, Honourable Dansua has piled up years of hard work and experience and is, therefore, confident that with the support of all well-meaning Ghanaians she is not going to fail and prayed for the co-operation of all.
“I have the professional competence, political experience, the independence of mind and the neutrality needed in a multi-faceted environment such as the Ministry of Youth and Sports to handle the ministry and turn the place around,” she declared with optimism, “and I see my new role not only as a personal challenge, but to all of us women who want the world to know and accept that we are more than capable in whatever challenge we are confronted with.”
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
A nation on a diet of committees
By Kofi Akordor
Ghanaians are passionate about committees and they do not hesitate to form one at the least opportunity. A worker is caught with a company laptop hidden under his armpit outside the company premises. This is a clear case of stealing but company disciplinary procedure demands that the police must not come in, so a committee of inquiry must be constituted to probe the suspected stealing of one laptop.
The committee may take days, weeks or even months to complete its work at the expense of productivity. Big money, probably exceeding the cost of the computer, may be spent feeding and refreshing committee members if the company is well-endowed. The end result may be a warning, suspension or outright dismissal. The company could have been saved time and money if the matter were treated with dispatch.
A security man is found heavily sedated with alcohol while on duty. A committee is hurriedly set up to investigate the matter. The committee, among other things, will find out whether truly the man took excess alcohol, the type and volume of alcohol consumed and finally recommend appropriate disciplinary measures to be taken.
At the corporate level, committees are not about disciplinary matters alone. There are new products to be launched, anniversaries to be celebrated and projects to be inaugurated. In all cases, committees must be set to plan activities in connection with these events.
There was this organisation which was preparing to inaugurate its new office building. There was as usual a planning committee with its subsets. For almost a year members of this committee and its subsets met on regular basis during which they had to abandon their regular work in the office. Crates of soft drinks went down the patchy throats of committee members while fried rice and chicken filled their tummies. A simple event was made complex. On the inauguration day, the programme which took over a year to plan did not take more than 30 minutes. Disappointingly, most of the invited guests including the Guest of Honour did not turn up.
The Ghanaian’s love for committees is in full evidence at the family level too. A relation is dead then there is a big committee with various subcommittees to plan an elaborate burial and funeral rites. These committees meet several times at different locations at the expense of private and public business until the D-day. The same committee and its subcommittees are revived when there is a wedding of a family member with little variation, depending on previous performance.
One institution which cannot be matched when it comes to committees is the Government of Ghana. If corporate institutions and families are passionate about committees, our governments are crazy about them. A government will be failing in its responsibilities if it fails to establish one committee or another at the least opportunity. It could be a one-man committee or a multi-member committee, sometimes with the power of a high court.
Sometimes committees are set up to probe or review the findings or recommendations of other committees. You may say the whole government machinery is surviving on committees.
Committees themselves are not bad. They are necessary in some cases to help the government have a clear picture of a situation, an event, an occurrence, a phenomenon, an accident, or a scandal so as to make it take a decision or an action which final goal is to remove a problem and make things better. In short, under certain circumstances, committees could not be avoided, since without them, no firm and fair decision or action could be taken.
However, the zeal and alacrity with which committees are formed in this country are increasingly making some of us to feel that the committees have become the solution to our problems and not the means to solving those problems.
We all know, or at least those who should know, the problems associated with transportation on the Volta Lake. We know that the Volta Lake Transport Company (VLTC), a subsidiary of the Volta River Authority (VRA), which has been mandated to operate water transportation on the Volta Lake, has woefully failed in its mandate. We also know that the Volta Lake is full of tree stumps which are dangerous to navigation on the lake.
We also know that the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA), which has regulatory control over navigation on the lake, operates mainly in the media, having very little control, if any, over what happens on the vast lake. This has given room to private boat operators to do their own thing on the lake, paying very little attention to safety rules. The only time we hear of its Chief Executive very loud in the media is when there is another disaster on the lake resulting in the loss of precious lives.
All these factors have combined to make transportation on the Volta Lake unsafe and dangerous. So why the rush to set up committees to investigate accidents on the lake anytime there is one, when the causes of the accidents are obviously known to those who should know?
The latest of such accidents occurred on October 19, 2009, in which at least 20 people lost their lives. As usual, the government’s reaction was to set up a probe into the accident. The solution to accidents on the Volta Lake has been pushed into the background until another accident occurs.
On October 21, 2009, personnel of the Ghana National Fire Service watched with frustrated impotence as the multi-storey building belonging to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was totally consumed by fire because the service lacks the necessary equipment to fight fire in high-rise buildings. A committee, as would be expected, went into action and came out with the obvious conclusions.
One, there was an electrical fault which triggered the fire. Two, there was no internal mechanism to detect and stop the fire from spreading. Three, the GNFS is not equipped to handle fire outbreaks in tall buildings. Apart from the need to establish criminality or otherwise, everything else is common knowledge.
The case of mental health in Ghana is widely known and well documented. Dr J.B. Asare, the former Chief Psychiatrist, had spoken about the state of our psychiatric hospitals in the country at every opportunity and written enough about them to stretch from Elubo to Hamile, without any appreciable response.
Dr Akwasi Osei, the man currently in charge of mental health in the country and who operates from the Accra Psychiatry Hospital at Adabraka in Accra, has not relented in his effort to get the Mental Health Bill passed into law. He has not stopped to tell the world about the deplorable and unsecured conditions under which the health workers operate at the medical facility. He has not hidden the truth from those who should care and act about the deprivations the inmates of the psychiatric hospital are going through, especially with regard to poor feeding and lack of medications.
Dr Osei and others continue to remind the government and others who matter that health workers in the psychiatric field are woefully inadequate in relation to the number of Ghanaians who suffer one form of psychiatric ailment or another. We have been told that relatives have abandoned the people they brought to the facility for treatment even though these patients have shown remarkable improvement and only need family support for full recovery. These patients have also added to the congestion being experienced at the hospital.
Dr Osei and others have made it public several times that because of inadequate funding, the hospital could not provide adequate security at the hospital, thus exposing the inmates and workers to danger and abuse. They gave a catalogue of other inadequacies including an ambulance for emergencies, transportation for the staff and incentives to motivate the few nurses still at post.
Governments have come and gone without responding to the lamentations of Dr Osei and those before him. Suddenly, our new government has found a solution. The setting up of a committee to investigate issues raised by a colleague, Anas Aremeyaw-Anas, who booked into the Accra Psychiatric Hospital as a mental patient. Aremeyaw-Anas would not have worried himself with admission procedure at the Pantang Hospital. He would have just walked about naked and mingled with the patients for a few hours and come to appreciate how shabbily we have treated mental health in this country. If the Accra Psychiatric Hospital in the heart of Accra is open, Pantang, which is on the outskirts of Accra, sandwiched between Adenta and Abokobi, is a Wild West: A jungle of abandoned and uncompleted buildings, bad roads and poor facilities. It is a forgotten territory.
What has Aremeyaw-Anas discovered that was not known previously? Nothing! Instead of a wasteful committee that would come back and tell us nothing new, the government should have plunged straight into serious action by picking the problems and solving them one by one.
We could have started by sending more bags of rice and maize to the hospital kitchen. A new ambulance, the cost of which cannot cripple our economy, should have been dispatched to the hospital by now, while immediate measures are taken to provide enough security at preventing marauders and other miscreants from invading the hospital premises.
While these interim measures are being taken, the government must begin to look at the service conditions of mental health workers generally and improve conditions in our psychiatry hospitals country-wide. The long-term solution is for the government to take interest in the Mental Health Bill and make sure it is passed into law within the shortest possible time so that other things will follow.
Committees as in the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Volta Lake disaster and Foreign Affairs building cases do not help matters. They only delay the solution to the real issues which themselves are never addressed. It is like we are being fed on a daily diet of committees, some of whose reports were never given any attention by the authorities which set them up. We could do with less of these committees and concentrate on removing those things which bring about the setting up of those committees.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogpot.com
Ghanaians are passionate about committees and they do not hesitate to form one at the least opportunity. A worker is caught with a company laptop hidden under his armpit outside the company premises. This is a clear case of stealing but company disciplinary procedure demands that the police must not come in, so a committee of inquiry must be constituted to probe the suspected stealing of one laptop.
The committee may take days, weeks or even months to complete its work at the expense of productivity. Big money, probably exceeding the cost of the computer, may be spent feeding and refreshing committee members if the company is well-endowed. The end result may be a warning, suspension or outright dismissal. The company could have been saved time and money if the matter were treated with dispatch.
A security man is found heavily sedated with alcohol while on duty. A committee is hurriedly set up to investigate the matter. The committee, among other things, will find out whether truly the man took excess alcohol, the type and volume of alcohol consumed and finally recommend appropriate disciplinary measures to be taken.
At the corporate level, committees are not about disciplinary matters alone. There are new products to be launched, anniversaries to be celebrated and projects to be inaugurated. In all cases, committees must be set to plan activities in connection with these events.
There was this organisation which was preparing to inaugurate its new office building. There was as usual a planning committee with its subsets. For almost a year members of this committee and its subsets met on regular basis during which they had to abandon their regular work in the office. Crates of soft drinks went down the patchy throats of committee members while fried rice and chicken filled their tummies. A simple event was made complex. On the inauguration day, the programme which took over a year to plan did not take more than 30 minutes. Disappointingly, most of the invited guests including the Guest of Honour did not turn up.
The Ghanaian’s love for committees is in full evidence at the family level too. A relation is dead then there is a big committee with various subcommittees to plan an elaborate burial and funeral rites. These committees meet several times at different locations at the expense of private and public business until the D-day. The same committee and its subcommittees are revived when there is a wedding of a family member with little variation, depending on previous performance.
One institution which cannot be matched when it comes to committees is the Government of Ghana. If corporate institutions and families are passionate about committees, our governments are crazy about them. A government will be failing in its responsibilities if it fails to establish one committee or another at the least opportunity. It could be a one-man committee or a multi-member committee, sometimes with the power of a high court.
Sometimes committees are set up to probe or review the findings or recommendations of other committees. You may say the whole government machinery is surviving on committees.
Committees themselves are not bad. They are necessary in some cases to help the government have a clear picture of a situation, an event, an occurrence, a phenomenon, an accident, or a scandal so as to make it take a decision or an action which final goal is to remove a problem and make things better. In short, under certain circumstances, committees could not be avoided, since without them, no firm and fair decision or action could be taken.
However, the zeal and alacrity with which committees are formed in this country are increasingly making some of us to feel that the committees have become the solution to our problems and not the means to solving those problems.
We all know, or at least those who should know, the problems associated with transportation on the Volta Lake. We know that the Volta Lake Transport Company (VLTC), a subsidiary of the Volta River Authority (VRA), which has been mandated to operate water transportation on the Volta Lake, has woefully failed in its mandate. We also know that the Volta Lake is full of tree stumps which are dangerous to navigation on the lake.
We also know that the Ghana Maritime Authority (GMA), which has regulatory control over navigation on the lake, operates mainly in the media, having very little control, if any, over what happens on the vast lake. This has given room to private boat operators to do their own thing on the lake, paying very little attention to safety rules. The only time we hear of its Chief Executive very loud in the media is when there is another disaster on the lake resulting in the loss of precious lives.
All these factors have combined to make transportation on the Volta Lake unsafe and dangerous. So why the rush to set up committees to investigate accidents on the lake anytime there is one, when the causes of the accidents are obviously known to those who should know?
The latest of such accidents occurred on October 19, 2009, in which at least 20 people lost their lives. As usual, the government’s reaction was to set up a probe into the accident. The solution to accidents on the Volta Lake has been pushed into the background until another accident occurs.
On October 21, 2009, personnel of the Ghana National Fire Service watched with frustrated impotence as the multi-storey building belonging to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was totally consumed by fire because the service lacks the necessary equipment to fight fire in high-rise buildings. A committee, as would be expected, went into action and came out with the obvious conclusions.
One, there was an electrical fault which triggered the fire. Two, there was no internal mechanism to detect and stop the fire from spreading. Three, the GNFS is not equipped to handle fire outbreaks in tall buildings. Apart from the need to establish criminality or otherwise, everything else is common knowledge.
The case of mental health in Ghana is widely known and well documented. Dr J.B. Asare, the former Chief Psychiatrist, had spoken about the state of our psychiatric hospitals in the country at every opportunity and written enough about them to stretch from Elubo to Hamile, without any appreciable response.
Dr Akwasi Osei, the man currently in charge of mental health in the country and who operates from the Accra Psychiatry Hospital at Adabraka in Accra, has not relented in his effort to get the Mental Health Bill passed into law. He has not stopped to tell the world about the deplorable and unsecured conditions under which the health workers operate at the medical facility. He has not hidden the truth from those who should care and act about the deprivations the inmates of the psychiatric hospital are going through, especially with regard to poor feeding and lack of medications.
Dr Osei and others continue to remind the government and others who matter that health workers in the psychiatric field are woefully inadequate in relation to the number of Ghanaians who suffer one form of psychiatric ailment or another. We have been told that relatives have abandoned the people they brought to the facility for treatment even though these patients have shown remarkable improvement and only need family support for full recovery. These patients have also added to the congestion being experienced at the hospital.
Dr Osei and others have made it public several times that because of inadequate funding, the hospital could not provide adequate security at the hospital, thus exposing the inmates and workers to danger and abuse. They gave a catalogue of other inadequacies including an ambulance for emergencies, transportation for the staff and incentives to motivate the few nurses still at post.
Governments have come and gone without responding to the lamentations of Dr Osei and those before him. Suddenly, our new government has found a solution. The setting up of a committee to investigate issues raised by a colleague, Anas Aremeyaw-Anas, who booked into the Accra Psychiatric Hospital as a mental patient. Aremeyaw-Anas would not have worried himself with admission procedure at the Pantang Hospital. He would have just walked about naked and mingled with the patients for a few hours and come to appreciate how shabbily we have treated mental health in this country. If the Accra Psychiatric Hospital in the heart of Accra is open, Pantang, which is on the outskirts of Accra, sandwiched between Adenta and Abokobi, is a Wild West: A jungle of abandoned and uncompleted buildings, bad roads and poor facilities. It is a forgotten territory.
What has Aremeyaw-Anas discovered that was not known previously? Nothing! Instead of a wasteful committee that would come back and tell us nothing new, the government should have plunged straight into serious action by picking the problems and solving them one by one.
We could have started by sending more bags of rice and maize to the hospital kitchen. A new ambulance, the cost of which cannot cripple our economy, should have been dispatched to the hospital by now, while immediate measures are taken to provide enough security at preventing marauders and other miscreants from invading the hospital premises.
While these interim measures are being taken, the government must begin to look at the service conditions of mental health workers generally and improve conditions in our psychiatry hospitals country-wide. The long-term solution is for the government to take interest in the Mental Health Bill and make sure it is passed into law within the shortest possible time so that other things will follow.
Committees as in the Accra Psychiatric Hospital, Volta Lake disaster and Foreign Affairs building cases do not help matters. They only delay the solution to the real issues which themselves are never addressed. It is like we are being fed on a daily diet of committees, some of whose reports were never given any attention by the authorities which set them up. We could do with less of these committees and concentrate on removing those things which bring about the setting up of those committees.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogpot.com
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Living in primitive times
Living in primitive times
By Kofi Akordor
Many years ago, while I was a student in Ho, there was a football match between Brong Ahafo United, popularly known as the Apostles of Power Soccer, and Volta Juantex at the Ho Sports Stadium. The bus which was to convey the visiting team entered the stadium amid applause from the handful of BA United supporters. Unknown to them, the players were not on the bus. They were rather struggling to scale the high walls of the stadium at another end, the reason being that they had been warned not to use the main gate because what we call ‘juju’ in local parlance, which would cause their defeat, had been planted there.
There were no fast rules then and the only fear was that the players might enter the field of play with broken limbs from the high jumps.
There are similar episodes in football. There have been occasions when visiting and home teams have haggled over who should enter the field first. Others have fought over jerseys when there is a clash of colours. This is because teams are believed to have sent their jerseys to Mallams, shrines, what have you, for purification and fortification before matches and changing that set for another might spell the doom of that team, so they were made to believe.
There is this popular anecdote attributed to Alhaji Karim Grunsah, the Chairman of King Faisal Football Club. In one of his loud lamentations, Alhaji Grunsah was said to have complained to no one in particular that everywhere he went, he was told Abdul Razak, who was then Head Coach of Asante Kotoko Football Club, had already been there. The question Alhaji Grunsah posed was, ‘Is Razak a coach or Mallam?’
The bigger question is, ‘What was Alhaji Grunsah looking for before seeing himself trailing in the shadow of Razak wherever he went?’
In football, there is something called ways and means and some clubs go to the extent of appointing officials whose only responsibility is to chart a ways-and-means path for the success of the club. This means paying large sums of money to soothsayers, clairvoyants and other such people parading in religious garbs operating from the synagogues, temples, mosques or shrines to influence the result of the match in their favour.
There is this sad story of a top Ghanaian club which campaigned in the continental African Cup of Champion Clubs tournament. Instead of concentrating their efforts on training and mapping out the right strategies to defeat their opponents, this team went consulting a ways-and-means guru who told them they would win the match. There was, however, a price to pay — whoever scored the first goal would die. That was an absurdity of the highest order. The team lost the match because no-one was ready to make the supreme sacrifice.
I have so far dwelt on football, where we are at our superstitious best. Football is a game which is developing every day, with scientific dimensions. A lot of us here do not appreciate things this way and want to believe that the gods would play and win football matches for us.
Every culture has its fair share of superstition and supernatural beliefs. However, if yesterday we could not find scientific answers to some events, can we say the situation is the same today? For instance, yesterday we could not comprehend how, at one delivery, a woman could bring forth two or more babies. So in some cultures, these babies were seen as evil and dumped in an evil forest. Today, advancement in medical science has cleared the doubts and given good reasons why a mother could give birth to two or more babies.
Should we still see twins, triplets, quadruplets, etc as evil?
I know that many years ago in some cultures, when motor vehicles were rare, death through motor accidents was a taboo, an abnormal death and victims were not given what could be described as fitting burials and funerals. The bodies were not allowed to enter the towns or villages and there was to be no crying or weeping.
Today, travelling by motor vehicles has become part and parcel of our lives. Ironically, an invention which is supposed to make travelling easier and more comfortable is bringing sorrow to our homes on a daily basis. Who, then, can describe death through a motor accident as a taboo?
It is the same transformational attitude which we need to adopt to address other cultural practices or beliefs which, in today’s context, are obsolete and outmoded. Take widowhood rites, for example. It is true that the loss of a husband was, and still is, a painful experience any wife could endure, especially in those days when the man was the sole breadwinner. It was to soothe the pain and make the widow adapt to her new situation that certain demands were imposed on her, such as confinement and restrictions on her movement.
Today, many wives are economically autonomous and to impose long-term restrictions on their movement means loss of income and a possible dislocation in the family’s economy. Moreover, there are many mothers who are employees in public or private service who cannot afford the luxury of staying away for long periods with the excuse of performing widowhood rites.
Apart from the confinement and restrictions on movement, some aspects of the rites are totally abominable and should not be entertained. Putting pepper in the eyes of women simply because their husbands are dead is, in plain terms, primitive. Why can’t they go smear the pepper in the eyes of the dead man’s father and mother who brought him into this world, in the first place?
I cannot talk for others, but if these widowhood rites have survived up to today, it is because women, out of ignorance or fear of the unknown, have allowed them to remain, because in the main it is women who execute these rites with some primitive enthusiasm.
One cultural practice which is prevalent in many parts of the country is trial by ordeal. This is the invocation of a dead person’s spirit, through clairvoyance or other supernatural means, to establish the cause or source of his or her death. In our cultural belief system, every death is attributable to somebody. So these clairvoyants always end up accusing someone in the community, very often a relative of the deceased’s, as the killer of the deceased.
Sometimes, without any consultation with the gods of the underworld, an accusing finger can be pointed at a member of the community for causing the death of someone and this person can be subjected to various inhuman treatments to force confession out of him/her or purify the person and protect him/her against the spirit of the deceased.
Trial by ordeal is also common when there is a theft in the village and an oracle is consulted. The oracles never mention names but give descriptions which will definitely match somebody in the village. Victims of these trials are subjected to various forms of torture, including beatings and the drinking of questionable concoctions which could even be harmful to their lives.
At the receiving end of these trials by ordeal are women who are accused of witchcraft or blamed for causing the death of their husbands. The Daily Graphic of Thursday, January 14, 2010 carried a pathetic story of a 52-year-old woman, Madam Sunkari Ghanyi, from Sokpeyiri, a village in the Wa West District of the Upper West Region, who had been subjected to inhuman treatment by a soothsayer on the grounds that she was a witch and had a hand in the death of a relative of her husband’s.
The said woman, according to the story, was forced to drink a concoction made of the blood of a fowl mixed with water and sand, as well as the chopped legs of a toad. Madam Ghanyi had been accused of causing the death of a woman who died apparently of complications during the childbirth.
This is the 21st century.
As stated earlier, we are no longer in the dark ages and there are scientific explanations for every phenomenon, if only we care to look for them. There are several medical explanations why a pregnant woman could die during childbirth. By the way, did the deceased woman have access to a medical facility for ante-natal observation during pregnancy? Was the delivery handled by a qualified midwife or a trained traditional birth attendant (TBA)? These are but a few questions.
The health professionals will tell you there are several factors that could make a pregnant woman suffer complications or even death at childbirth. The knowledge of these and taking the necessary precautions could have saved the life of that poor woman and that of many others.
Instead of doing what present-day requirements demand, we have decided to continue with the primitive practices of yesterday by blaming poor women for the death of other poor women. How does society progress with such a crude and primitive mentality? It is unfortunate that Madam Ghanyi did not get any help in the embrace of the law. The people who inflicted that physical and psychological pain on her have been set free by a Wa Magistrate Court.
Today, when a drunk or careless driver drives straight into an oncoming vehicle and kills innocent people, we do not address the problem but blame an innocent man or woman sitting somewhere wondering where his or her next meal will come from. The main culprits – drunkenness and carelessness – are ignored, so more people continue to die through accidents.
It is strange that we blame the failure of a pupil to pass his or her examination on the spiritual machinations of others – dead or alive – when the main causes, laziness, lack of parental support or poor educational facilities, could have been addressed by society.
Africans are generally highly religious to superstitious proportions. This has created the fertile ground for some churches which operate more or less like cults to flourish. The truth is, we were not alone in superstitious beliefs in the past. The difference is that others have since become scientific and are able to explain such natural phenomena as day and night, rainfall and drought, floods, earthquake and even death in more scientific terms.
This has helped them to advance from very primitive states to more modern civilisation and they are still advancing. Looking at ourselves, we cannot pretend to be making progress like others. This is because we still give primitive interpretations to events that have scientific explanations.
We must begin to accept the fact that no success comes without effort. If a football team do not train hard and take the advice of their coach seriously, they do not trot to the turf to win because a Mallam somewhere has told them that they are going to win. They will be humiliated.
If, as a student, you do not study and take your lessons seriously, you do not blame an old aunt or a dead grandmother for your failure. In the same way, if you do not cultivate a healthy lifestyle, observe personal hygiene and follow the advice of your doctor, you do not blame your woes on another person who is also struggling to survive.
If someone is drunk but decides to drive or fail to observe traffic regulations, no other person should be blamed for the resultant accident
We must begin to, like others, be scientific in our thinking and responsible for our actions. We must begin to probe and look for answers or forever remain where we are now, while others are planning how to put Man on Mars.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com.
By Kofi Akordor
Many years ago, while I was a student in Ho, there was a football match between Brong Ahafo United, popularly known as the Apostles of Power Soccer, and Volta Juantex at the Ho Sports Stadium. The bus which was to convey the visiting team entered the stadium amid applause from the handful of BA United supporters. Unknown to them, the players were not on the bus. They were rather struggling to scale the high walls of the stadium at another end, the reason being that they had been warned not to use the main gate because what we call ‘juju’ in local parlance, which would cause their defeat, had been planted there.
There were no fast rules then and the only fear was that the players might enter the field of play with broken limbs from the high jumps.
There are similar episodes in football. There have been occasions when visiting and home teams have haggled over who should enter the field first. Others have fought over jerseys when there is a clash of colours. This is because teams are believed to have sent their jerseys to Mallams, shrines, what have you, for purification and fortification before matches and changing that set for another might spell the doom of that team, so they were made to believe.
There is this popular anecdote attributed to Alhaji Karim Grunsah, the Chairman of King Faisal Football Club. In one of his loud lamentations, Alhaji Grunsah was said to have complained to no one in particular that everywhere he went, he was told Abdul Razak, who was then Head Coach of Asante Kotoko Football Club, had already been there. The question Alhaji Grunsah posed was, ‘Is Razak a coach or Mallam?’
The bigger question is, ‘What was Alhaji Grunsah looking for before seeing himself trailing in the shadow of Razak wherever he went?’
In football, there is something called ways and means and some clubs go to the extent of appointing officials whose only responsibility is to chart a ways-and-means path for the success of the club. This means paying large sums of money to soothsayers, clairvoyants and other such people parading in religious garbs operating from the synagogues, temples, mosques or shrines to influence the result of the match in their favour.
There is this sad story of a top Ghanaian club which campaigned in the continental African Cup of Champion Clubs tournament. Instead of concentrating their efforts on training and mapping out the right strategies to defeat their opponents, this team went consulting a ways-and-means guru who told them they would win the match. There was, however, a price to pay — whoever scored the first goal would die. That was an absurdity of the highest order. The team lost the match because no-one was ready to make the supreme sacrifice.
I have so far dwelt on football, where we are at our superstitious best. Football is a game which is developing every day, with scientific dimensions. A lot of us here do not appreciate things this way and want to believe that the gods would play and win football matches for us.
Every culture has its fair share of superstition and supernatural beliefs. However, if yesterday we could not find scientific answers to some events, can we say the situation is the same today? For instance, yesterday we could not comprehend how, at one delivery, a woman could bring forth two or more babies. So in some cultures, these babies were seen as evil and dumped in an evil forest. Today, advancement in medical science has cleared the doubts and given good reasons why a mother could give birth to two or more babies.
Should we still see twins, triplets, quadruplets, etc as evil?
I know that many years ago in some cultures, when motor vehicles were rare, death through motor accidents was a taboo, an abnormal death and victims were not given what could be described as fitting burials and funerals. The bodies were not allowed to enter the towns or villages and there was to be no crying or weeping.
Today, travelling by motor vehicles has become part and parcel of our lives. Ironically, an invention which is supposed to make travelling easier and more comfortable is bringing sorrow to our homes on a daily basis. Who, then, can describe death through a motor accident as a taboo?
It is the same transformational attitude which we need to adopt to address other cultural practices or beliefs which, in today’s context, are obsolete and outmoded. Take widowhood rites, for example. It is true that the loss of a husband was, and still is, a painful experience any wife could endure, especially in those days when the man was the sole breadwinner. It was to soothe the pain and make the widow adapt to her new situation that certain demands were imposed on her, such as confinement and restrictions on her movement.
Today, many wives are economically autonomous and to impose long-term restrictions on their movement means loss of income and a possible dislocation in the family’s economy. Moreover, there are many mothers who are employees in public or private service who cannot afford the luxury of staying away for long periods with the excuse of performing widowhood rites.
Apart from the confinement and restrictions on movement, some aspects of the rites are totally abominable and should not be entertained. Putting pepper in the eyes of women simply because their husbands are dead is, in plain terms, primitive. Why can’t they go smear the pepper in the eyes of the dead man’s father and mother who brought him into this world, in the first place?
I cannot talk for others, but if these widowhood rites have survived up to today, it is because women, out of ignorance or fear of the unknown, have allowed them to remain, because in the main it is women who execute these rites with some primitive enthusiasm.
One cultural practice which is prevalent in many parts of the country is trial by ordeal. This is the invocation of a dead person’s spirit, through clairvoyance or other supernatural means, to establish the cause or source of his or her death. In our cultural belief system, every death is attributable to somebody. So these clairvoyants always end up accusing someone in the community, very often a relative of the deceased’s, as the killer of the deceased.
Sometimes, without any consultation with the gods of the underworld, an accusing finger can be pointed at a member of the community for causing the death of someone and this person can be subjected to various inhuman treatments to force confession out of him/her or purify the person and protect him/her against the spirit of the deceased.
Trial by ordeal is also common when there is a theft in the village and an oracle is consulted. The oracles never mention names but give descriptions which will definitely match somebody in the village. Victims of these trials are subjected to various forms of torture, including beatings and the drinking of questionable concoctions which could even be harmful to their lives.
At the receiving end of these trials by ordeal are women who are accused of witchcraft or blamed for causing the death of their husbands. The Daily Graphic of Thursday, January 14, 2010 carried a pathetic story of a 52-year-old woman, Madam Sunkari Ghanyi, from Sokpeyiri, a village in the Wa West District of the Upper West Region, who had been subjected to inhuman treatment by a soothsayer on the grounds that she was a witch and had a hand in the death of a relative of her husband’s.
The said woman, according to the story, was forced to drink a concoction made of the blood of a fowl mixed with water and sand, as well as the chopped legs of a toad. Madam Ghanyi had been accused of causing the death of a woman who died apparently of complications during the childbirth.
This is the 21st century.
As stated earlier, we are no longer in the dark ages and there are scientific explanations for every phenomenon, if only we care to look for them. There are several medical explanations why a pregnant woman could die during childbirth. By the way, did the deceased woman have access to a medical facility for ante-natal observation during pregnancy? Was the delivery handled by a qualified midwife or a trained traditional birth attendant (TBA)? These are but a few questions.
The health professionals will tell you there are several factors that could make a pregnant woman suffer complications or even death at childbirth. The knowledge of these and taking the necessary precautions could have saved the life of that poor woman and that of many others.
Instead of doing what present-day requirements demand, we have decided to continue with the primitive practices of yesterday by blaming poor women for the death of other poor women. How does society progress with such a crude and primitive mentality? It is unfortunate that Madam Ghanyi did not get any help in the embrace of the law. The people who inflicted that physical and psychological pain on her have been set free by a Wa Magistrate Court.
Today, when a drunk or careless driver drives straight into an oncoming vehicle and kills innocent people, we do not address the problem but blame an innocent man or woman sitting somewhere wondering where his or her next meal will come from. The main culprits – drunkenness and carelessness – are ignored, so more people continue to die through accidents.
It is strange that we blame the failure of a pupil to pass his or her examination on the spiritual machinations of others – dead or alive – when the main causes, laziness, lack of parental support or poor educational facilities, could have been addressed by society.
Africans are generally highly religious to superstitious proportions. This has created the fertile ground for some churches which operate more or less like cults to flourish. The truth is, we were not alone in superstitious beliefs in the past. The difference is that others have since become scientific and are able to explain such natural phenomena as day and night, rainfall and drought, floods, earthquake and even death in more scientific terms.
This has helped them to advance from very primitive states to more modern civilisation and they are still advancing. Looking at ourselves, we cannot pretend to be making progress like others. This is because we still give primitive interpretations to events that have scientific explanations.
We must begin to accept the fact that no success comes without effort. If a football team do not train hard and take the advice of their coach seriously, they do not trot to the turf to win because a Mallam somewhere has told them that they are going to win. They will be humiliated.
If, as a student, you do not study and take your lessons seriously, you do not blame an old aunt or a dead grandmother for your failure. In the same way, if you do not cultivate a healthy lifestyle, observe personal hygiene and follow the advice of your doctor, you do not blame your woes on another person who is also struggling to survive.
If someone is drunk but decides to drive or fail to observe traffic regulations, no other person should be blamed for the resultant accident
We must begin to, like others, be scientific in our thinking and responsible for our actions. We must begin to probe and look for answers or forever remain where we are now, while others are planning how to put Man on Mars.
fokofi@yahoo.co.uk
kofiakordor.blogspot.com.
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