Fleecing The State

Toll booth

No measure introduced to streamline our financial operations is spared exploitation by individuals and even companies to the detriment of the state kitty.

It is more worrying when these are done with the connivance of public officials who partake in the ill-gotten largesse.

Yesterday, the Ghanaian Times did a story on the anomaly following on the heels of a similar one carried by DAILY GUIDE about the thievery at the toll booth in Beposo in the Western Region. The DAILY GUIDE report cited a certain Alhaji who, because he appears to have the contacts, is spared any action from the appropriate authority even as his inappropriate conduct in the management of the toll booth in question is household knowledge.

While we must as a nation find a way of making it impossible for the bad nuts among us to continue to fleece the state, it is worrying that the Western Regional Director of the Ghana Highway Authority appears to be in denial about the reality.

The man is said to have denied that any such thing is happening. We do not agree with him and fret that he can dismiss the report in the manner that he did instead of tackling it. He is being protective of his job, perhaps thinking that admitting there are such anomalies could cost him his job. It is not the best way to deal with such matters.

It is becoming clear that people who are put in positions of trust consider the opportunity as a means of fleecing the state. It is a pity that such open thievery has already become a feature of our country even as public officials live in denial of them.

Those in charge of the operations of the privatized toll booths are making nonsense of the objective for which the highways were commercialized.

We are unable, by such developments, to determine whether we as a people have the interest of the country at heart and can therefore work, totally committed, to the wellbeing of Mother Ghana.

The erroneous impression is that the state as an entity must be milked by whoever finds themselves in positions which afford them such opportunity.

For those who do not avail themselves of the opportunities to milk the state, which come their way through appointments and others, invectives await them at the end of their service by family members and friends who tend to describe them as useless good for nothing individuals.

Stealing from an individual is considered more of a social vice than from the state and it is worrying that the anomaly has become so deeply seated in us that nobody seems interested in rooting it out.

Such trappings are suggestive of a decaying society and must be reversed if national growth is to be achieved.

We are calling on the germane authorities to wade into the open thievery at the toll booths so that the objective for which they were commercialized in the first place is realized to the benefit of the country as a whole.