Misplaced Priorities, Ghostly 24-Hour Markets

The completed and abandoned Agenda 111 health facilities across the country would serve the interest of Ghanaians more than the propaganda-driven 24-Hour Markets.

The only reason such markets are being constructed is for want of something physical to represent the wobbling 24-Hour Economy policy and the procurement leverages to be garnered thereof.

Government should be serious about the management of the affairs of this country, because the politics or propaganda is just getting out of hands.

Enough has been expressed about what makes the construction of markets under the guise of pushing the so-called 24-Hour Economy agenda such an unproductive venture.

With a dwindling purchasing power of the average Ghanaian, there is no doubt about the uselessness of the ghostly markets when the normal ones are losing more patrons.

We acknowledge the contracts being dished out to National Democratic Congress (NDC)-aligned contractors so they too would partake in the division of the spoils of election victory. After all, they too contributed to the election war machine and must be gratified, their gesture not being a Father Xmas generosity.

When shall we put an end to such political journeys which will only lead us to cul-de-sacs? The one step forward, two backwards, continue to be a feature of governance in the country under the NDC, and if this is not stopped, appreciable inroads would not be registered in national development.

The thousands of nurses sitting at home with no sense of when they would be engaged to work for a living demands pragmatic templates that would get them busy. The Agenda 111 projects conceptualised by the previous government have been abandoned, some of them at advanced stages of completion yet these were birthed to address unemployment among nurses and others. With the NDC government yet to make good its promise of continuing the abandoned projects, the nurses could look forward to more idling days at home.

Former President Akufo-Addo did not mince words when during a public engagement he told Ghanaians that one day the projects he initiated would be abandoned by others who would come into government. That has come to pass. Experience about the nature of the NDC should tell us that being envious of credits going to the NPP other than them, they would rather the uncompleted projects are left to vegetate than completed and commissioned.

More health facilities would provide impetus for more Ghanaian health personnel to work 24-hours; that is where the 24-Hour Economy works and not a crab or vegetable market.  After all, in the field of health delivery, doctors, nurses and other ancillary staff work on shift basis. If all the Agenda 111 facilities are functional, the 1:3:3 can only be enhanced because it already exists in that field.

The markets being built, parts of the total funding of which is enough to complete the abandoned hospital projects, would only provide sanctuaries for reptiles and weeds to thrive; nobody would go to market during the wee hours of the night to interact with ghosts.

Those who gave orders to soldiers in Kumasi to deny the Parliamentary Committee on Health access to the Afari Military Hospital should bow their heads in shame and know that what they did was despicable.

Let the Mighty Minority continue to expose the fault lines in the NDC governance template.