Go Cut Grass

Reducing Ghanaian employed men and women to cutters of grass and breakers of stone is Hon Rashid Pelpuo's prescription for the employment malaise that has afflicted the country and almost at crisis level.

It does not matter whether it was a suggestion given him by a visitor to his office as he sought to explain the mind-boggling prescription after coming under sustained public attack. 'Go and cut grass to sustain yourselves,' he seems to be telling the unemployed. He definitely incurred the ire of both the unemployed and their parents – both victims of the debilitating condition.

That he presented it on air to defend what his government has done to mitigate the unemployment challenge in the country suggests his acquiescence of it. Since we are unable to ascertain the veracity of whether he did not originate the formula, all we can do under the circumstances is attribute to him, and for that matter the government in which is a key player, the inappropriate remark.

The near-countless Ghanaians on the unemployment list, for him, should take the opportunities offered in their communities and get involved in cutting grass and breaking stones for sale to domestic animal rearing public and road contractors respectively. He could have easily added the harvesting of dung and selling of same to gardeners along Accra's major drains.

Since these employment avenues do not come with any skill, Ghanaian youth could well avail themselves of them, especially since the Hon Minister's children, nephews and others will join in the newfound job opportunities.

In our amazement, all we can in a swift response as have many Ghanaians is to remark, “What a country and what a minister!”

The quality of a government is not hidden; it originates from the manner in which appointees hold themselves in public places, express themselves over such crucial issues of national importance such as unemployment, sufficient evidence being Rashid's controversial effusion.

For those with a sense of history, especially apartheid South Africa, they can easily recall the “hewers of wood and drawers of water” label assigned the blacks of that country at the height of apartheid. We too at the height of a mismanaged country can think, using Rashid's formula, of regarding the unemployed as “cutters of grass and breakers of stone.”

One day when normalcy is restored to governance by a new set of Ghanaians, Rashid's formula would find space in the compilation of piercing gaffes.

Not even his explanation that his thought was taken out of context spared him the vituperation of his compatriots, many of whom regretted that a minister of his calibre would spew out such garbage on the airwaves.

Rashid would also be remembered for describing Dr Mahamudu Bawumia's gesture of ordering furniture for kids of Kpersi Primary School in Wa as irresponsible. Just how a gesture intended to improve the learning conditions of kids who had not known desks constituted irresponsibility beats our imagination. That is how he regards issues.