Culture Of Maintenance

It is very unfortunate that Ghana has succeeded in adding the Lands Commission to the list of state institutions that have gone up in flames. In all these fire outbreaks, the thousands of vital documents housed in these institutions were destroyed.

Among some of the state institutions that we have had fire destroy their property, documents and buildings include the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation, the Tema Oil Refinery, the Foreign Ministry, the Ghana Stock Exchange, the Ministry of Information, the National Commission and Civic Education and the residence of former President Rawlings.

The first thing that the government does is to set up a committee to investigate the cause of the fire. In most cases, the committee’s terms of reference had included determining the immediate and remote causes of the fire outbreak, ascertaining the extent of damage, evaluating the appropriateness of existing security and safety measures before the fire and to make recommendations to avoid recurrence.

In some instances, fingers point to arson in that there was some substance to claims that the fire outbreaks were neither accidental nor coincidental, but there were hidden hands that engineered such fire outbreaks. This clearly tells us how shallow-minded some people are when issues like these crop up.

We always forget that some of these buildings put up some 40 and 50 years ago have not seen a single rehabilitation or renovation in their life time. One enters some of these buildings and the first thing one notices is the bad and poor electrical wiring system.

The GARAPHIC BUSINESS strongly believes that the nation is not serious about the culture of maintenance and until such a time that she embraces this culture, most of her old buildings would always be on fire.

But here is a question. When was the last time the Lands Commission was re-wired? Or better still, when did any of these institutions receive any fire safety certificate from the Ghana National Fire Service?

A call is therefore being made to all stakeholders in national development, particularly public institutions which are being housed in colonial buildings, to endeavour to engender the culture of maintenance.

This is very fundamental because the absence of proper and adequate maintenance would leave many national development projects at the mercy of fire out breaks.

Suffice it to say, in the absence of an adequate and frequent maintenance on even new structures, no matter how guaranteed they are and the quality of their intended purpose, will quickly become shadows of their former selves.

The nation cannot afford to be losing millions of cedis due to poor maintenance culture. If we have to move forward as a country, then it is high time we took maintenance as one of the pillars of growth.