President Arthur Mill’s Incompetence is Causing Chaos at Tema Harbour

When a segment of an organisation or members of a group are not dispensing their duties well, these persons should be sacked and new employees should be assigned to their duties. You do not bring in a whole organisation or new taskforce to augment the troubles in this area, which men are exclusively trained for that. This is the case of Tema Harbour, where the President's incompetence is revealed in the manner he did not allow the gentle custom officers to pursue their noble task when some of them were found to be engaged in fraud, but instead brought in the BNI security forces that are now causing colossal confusion in the Harbour.

My personal advice to the President is that he should either sack all the security forces brought in through his incompetence ruling/organisation ability and instead allows the custom officers themselves to do their job, and if possible employ their own security forces to assist them. If due to the situation in the country which calls for unemployment to be reduced so he would still allow these security forces to keep their jobs at Tema, then these forces should be there as watchmen and render their services as so, without engaging in any endorsement of papers or documents when people are withdrawing their goods or properties from the Harbour. They should only check to see that the names tally to enable people collect their goods in no time.

Custom officers in Ghana are hardworking servicemen who render their services in a noble manner, despite the fact that they face criticisms all around when people interact with them. They are specially trained to deal with people in a gentle manner and counsel clients and agents alike without causing much trouble or confusion. These people know their jobs very well, as some of them are trained lawyers, psychologists, sociologists, social workers, nurses and etc. They smile when it is appropriate to do so and they even cry when their clients expressed sad situation or incidents to them. In short, these are professional people who know their jobs well and so make sure that those being served are met in the manner that could be classified as a therapist – client relationship. They are modern civil servants that had endured all hardships, and even when they are criticised often take it positively and make sure to amend their ways.

This is not the manner the security officers sent to the Harbour through President Arthur Mills's incompetence behave. They are arrogant and not polished and some of them find it hard to behave normal to people or clients who come to the Harbour. Remember that Tema Harbour is an international harbour where we have people from all walks of life coming to claim their goods and properties; and some of these people are diplomats and foreigners whom Ghana's future developments depend on them. If we do not sack these security forces and instead replace them with security agencies that have been trained as custom officers, our reputation can be tarnished.

My own experience is something that can be taken as an example. My transit property has been checked and supervised by these gentle custom officers who eventually gave us one competent officer to follow us as an escort officer. The manner one Mr Bo Amissah talked to me about the fact that he thinks the goods being sent to the country which borders us would not go or reached its destination, almost led to a fight. Meanwhile, this custom officer knew his job and as he reiterated to me what Amissah was suggesting was nonsensical, that is, to wait for more that three months to send these goods through the sea, when he knows that it was not the normal thing he was pushing us to do. Amissah's background as a military officer or whoever he was could not help him to behave gentle like the manner custom officers are trained to meet their clients. As at now, though there is no law forbidding us to transport this property by road, Amissah is still keeping the car without endorsing it or allowing us to take our own property. Now that he was going to face prosecution (and probably compensate me), he is changing his story that he was earlier suggesting that he was prepared to pay (from his own pocket) for the ferry that would carry the goods by sea. Not only that for he has changed his story that I said that I was taking the car to Hohoe; but if it true that I was taking the car to Hohoe why did he doubt the custom officer who had been doing the job for many years and had been assigned to do this very job?

I am imploring President Arthur Mills, whoever gave him the advice that sending the BNI security officers into the harbour would solve the problem did ill-advise him. This reflects his incompetence of dealing with things when he ask the public concerning how he should deal with a problem first, instead of himself bringing out different solutions or conceiving his own superb ideas and then request for their comments or criticisms. The security forces he sent to Tema and Takoradi Harbours are seriously causing confusions, and the earlier he sacked them, the better it would be for him. But supposing he would like to keep these officers in these foreign territories because of the problem of unemployment, then I would suggest to him that they remain in these areas as WATCHMEN and should not be allowed to ENDORSE any documents which the custom officers had already prepared or completed working on them. Their presence in the Harbours is irrelevant and is causing tragedy and confusion in the country!

References
Myers, D. G. (2002). Social Psychology (7th Ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill Inc.

Lord, C. G. (1997). Social Psychology. New York: Harcourt Brace College

The Author is a former Associate Professor in Åbo Akademi University in Finland and Uppsala University in Sweden. He is currently going to stay permanently and work at the University of Ghana, Legon, at the Department of Psychology as a lecturer. The author will do a radio interview and later will present a full report of his Social psychological interaction study at the Tema port.

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