Experts At Trading
It's very fascinating when you listen to Ghanaian public officials speak during radio and television interviews. The interviews become even more interesting when the public officials are asked to provide statistics to back their arguments.
So, any time a public official or somebody with the title in vogue, 'government spokesperson' is called by a radio or television anchor to answer a question, I begin scratching my head.
I scratch my head not because the official would make a major policy statement, but because the official just wastes everybody's time. You either hear phrases like 'I don't have the figures' or 'I am not responsible'.
Any time there is a man-made or natural disaster in the country, all public officials do is to either trade blame or hide under a confusing cliché to escape responsibility.
So, in Ghana, when there is a problem, culprits are defined based on where they stand. If you are an opposition party, every evil that befalls the society is attributable to the government after all, that is why you are called an opposition party. And if you are in government, everything wrong is blameable on the minority.
This cancerous virus of blaming every mishap on someone else has even eaten deep into the psyche of some public sector organisations. That is why officials of the Ghana Water Company (Aqua Vitens Rand Limited) can blame a fire officer for selling the fire hydrant to residents of Adenta for domestic use instead of using it to put out a blaze at Agbogbloshie Market in Accra for example.
After the recent fire outbreak at Anyaa, a suburb of Accra, it was not only the two major political parties that traded accusations. The most intriguing encounter seemed to have occurred between the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) and the Ghana Water Company.
When some survivors of the Anyaa explosion accused the fire officials of not arriving in time to put out the blaze, the fire officials retorted, “it was because we did not have enough water in the fire hydrant.” Then bam! An official of the Ghana Water Company, feeling so aggrieved for his organisation being run down, decided to grant an interview to an Accra-based radio station to rebuff the claims of the fire officer.
According to the Ghana Water Company official, the fire service could not arrive at the accident scene on time because they (fire service) were “selling the water for domestic use.”
What the company's official failed to realise was that that statement of his was a subtle admission of his employer's incompetence. His statement was also a clever way of saying that his company has failed in its mandate to deliver water to the tax payer.
If the Water Company official's statement is clearly analysed, it would become clear that it had no merit, because the water used by firemen is not ordinary water. The water used by fire fighters is always more frosty because it has been treated with a lot of chemicals that turns it into hard water which would certainly not be fit for domestic use.
Even those of us who live in areas where water runs through our taps once in every month have never thought of calling 192 anytime we don't have water. And so, to the extent that fire hydrants are now used for domestic purposes, then our water supply situation has reached emergency proportions and I humbly suggest that we call for external intervention immediately.
The argument of the water company official would also have been sound if he had proved that instead of going straight to Anyaa to put out the blaze, the fire-fighter turned his Carmichael Truck into a water tanker and was distributing water to residents of Adenta.
Public officials who are paid with our taxes should spare us the agony of their rhetoric and trivial and rather show enough empathy when there is a national crisis.
Well, the Anyaa incident is just one of many. Some commentators have even said that it received the attention it did not necessarily because of the number of souls that perished in the explosion, but because it struck some political nerves.
This writer lives in an enclosed Accra neighbourhood that was recently invaded by armed robbers. In fact, the robbers not only stole the valuables of residents, but also subjected members of some households to severe physical torture. As of the time of the robbery, there was total blackout in the estate. It was on the day of that robbery that I truly felt how reckless some public officials can be.
Sensing danger after many of our colleagues had been robbed and beaten to pulp a day before, some of the daring residents decided to call up the Legon branch of the Electricity Company of Ghana. A sweet voice at the other end of the phone simply replied : “Oh, are you the only ones sleeping in darkness in Accra? Please stop worrying us. You are not the only ones sleeping in darkness!” Then the lady banged the phone.
It was obvious that the ECG official did not know that she is employed by the distraught caller. That should explain her impudence.Many times when people are in grief, this is the kind of response they get in our country when officialdom is called to action.
After getting the rude awakening from the ECG official, we decided to turn to the police service for protection. When a call was placed to the nearest police station, they simply said that they (the police) are aware that there is an average of five robberies in that neighbourhood but that there was nothing they could do because they did not have enough men and equipment to come and protect our lives and property.
Strangely though, after the residents had negotiated some payment terms with that particular police station, they visit the area once in a while. Never mind the fact that they just come and drive around — they come because they now have a sense of obligation to us, we pay them every month.
All the scenarios narrated above are not fiction and this writer does not believe that the nations we aspire to match in development terms have reached their enviable status through this type of attitude.
We should stop blaming people for things we can do with the limited resources we have been provided with. And public officials in particular should begin to learn to become a bit more responsible in their roles.
If there is something that makes people happy, that one thing can only be doing what you know how to do to the best so as to receive that satisfaction that you have done extremely well. And I hope that those officials at ECG who talk to people 'anyhow' would be fished out by their superiors and appropriate sanctions meted out to them. By Maximus Attah