Open Letter To The Ghana President

yk: Open Letter The President:
Mr. President, This Time Ghanaians Are 'Tie-ad'.
Mr. President,
The Ghanaian consumers appear to be the most understanding in the whole world arguably. Whether that should be classified as a worthwhile conduct for a developing country like ours, is another thing for discussion. In the typical Ghanaian fashion, whenever we are faced with issues of national importance almost at crisis point, we complain for a little while, and then as if to console ourselves and activate our immense capabilities to cope with hardships only Africans know how to do best, we normally end with phrases as such:

“God Save Ghana oo”
“Ny3 hwee, 3b3y3 yie”
“ego bee (these days, irrespective of the situation, “edey bee k3k3”, is sarcastically doing the trick).”

“Our leaders just don't care”
“politicians are the same”
“greedy bastard”
“evil dwarfs with shape teeth”
“selfish politicians.”
Etc, etc...
Interestingly, that becomes the end of the story. The authorities seem to win constantly; the people keep marking time in their struggles to make ends meet, aluta continua. It is not surprising therefore that, politicians having tried-and-tested the people in the last 20 years and noticed this trend of complaining into thin air seriously by a few educated 'too-no' individuals, whilst the majority will just say,

“eeii, Ghana paa!! God save us oo!!”, only as a subconscious cooperation to relax and normalise a bad situation within their thinking in preparedness to cope, as once again another bad situation is endorsed and the entire populace find ways to survive anything thrown at them. In the end, the typical Ghanaian will say, “fama nyame”.

Mr. President, the consumers who are the engine of the economy have endured a lot of hardships from all utility service providers.

In all these instances of unacceptable services delivery from utility suppliers, namely ECG-GRIDCO-VRA and GWCL, these service providers keep increasing the unit charge for their tariffs, who show nothing to justify these increments, other than at the end of service delivering tail of the chain is the usual very poor service to the consumers who have by now become used to being taking for granted by service providers and central government.

Leadership at all levels have not seen it fit and honourable to take the responsibility of this unprecedented incessant failure to meet the energy/electricity and water supply needs of consumers.

These utility suppliers seem to lack the vision to upgrade their facilities and exploit other modern forms to meet the rising demands from their ever increasing consumer base. What is really happening in Ghana, Mr. President? We are failing ourselves and posterity.

Indeed this should call for what leadership is meant to be. We can only describe the situation our country finds itself in as a crisis one. Water and electricity are basic necessities of our human livelihood, at least, in the 21st Century.

It appears the political leadership of the country has become grossly unconcerned in their actions whilst these essential utilities – which are basic human rights of every Ghanaian - cannot see the day light of uninterrupted supply.

With all due respect, what is the use of any leadership which cannot solve basic challenges of the people being led? Mr. President, you promised Ghanaians the load shedding will be a thing of the past by now. I only hope you share the leadership quality of Carlos Ghosn, CEO of Renault-Nissan in this quote:

"I think that the best training a top manager can be engaged in is management by example. I want to make sure there is no discrepancy between what we say and what we do. If you preach accountability and then promote somebody with bad results, it doesn't work. I personally believe the best training is management by example. Don't believe what I say. Believe what I do.”

Mr. President, you are two months old into your presidency. One of your campaign pledges during the just ended elections is that if you were giving the mandate to lead the country, the infamous dumso-dumso will be a thing of the past. In specific details what are you telling Ghanaians when this electricity crisis will indeed be a thing of the past?

Now, the situation is compounded in the sense that, water supplies by GWCL is in disarray and it is once again the ordinary people suffering from this lack of management of water supply as long as they have no money to buy septic tanks.

To add insults to injury, the ordinary people of Ghana who are being pressed from all sides just to keep their heads above water, have been dealt another stinking whack in the head because a supposed caring social democratic government decided to increase the price of fuel at the pumps by 20% at a very wrong time.

I must admit, I have always championed the need to phase out fuel subsidy, but not the concept to help low income families underlying the idea of the subsidy.

What is worrying is when government has not announced any social intervention plan or initiative to continue to help struggling low income earning families who form the greater part of the populace. Sir, the struggling people of Ghana are 'tie-ad'!!!

Mr. President, with all due respect, I will not mince with words and will not get technical here, but our country has leadership crisis, plain and simple. Our public and civil service are full of old, jaded and incompetent personnel coupled with the directives from those equally incompetent ministries as the supervisors of our public services.

It will be unfair to lay all the blame on the door-steps of our present political leadership, but as a result of a cumulative effect of successive political leaderships. Having said that, I doubt very much if all the brains in managing our public and civil service institutions are ineffective by default, but some have accused politicians of making them look incompetent by their constant interference in what is supposed to be the work of technocrats.

Mr. President, forgive me if I have to make any reference to the societies we call developed to what we have in our beloved motherland, because I happened to have spent most of my working life in the former society. One fundamental different is that they have gotten developed and have maintained that development with progressive agendas because they plan ahead and take every little details serious. Does our nation Ghana have any 10-year plan of action in any sector of our economy?

Ghana doesn't need a rocket scientist as head-of-state to have an unprecedented positive impact on the welfare of the ordinary Ghana. What the ordinary people expect from the office of the president is truthfulness in transparent communication to the public and making sure that calculated deception to achieve a clandestine agenda within government corridors which will not relieve the ordinary people from economic hardship should be clamped down and dealt with swiftly the office of the president.

Finally Mr. President, the people must get simple and decisive responses for very pressing issues/challenges in present day Ghana. The leadership of the country cannot continue to assume this laidback attitude in the face of very obvious under-performance from our utility suppliers namely electricity and water.

There is no simple way to put this as a crisis situation which requires swift and pragmatic steps from leader to address this situation with all the resources and urgency it requires. Your presidency can go down as the best yet to come if you chose to act now.

I will end here with a quote meant to be a word of encouragement to the leadership of the presidency:

“All of the great leaders have had one characteristic in common: it was the willingness to confront unequivocally the major anxiety of their people in their time. This, and not much else, is the essence of leadership.”

-- John Kenneth Galbraith
God help Ghana in our quest for good governance.
God bless our beloved motherland Ghana.
YK amakye ansah-yeboah
CED/Founding President, CPAG
(00447405257335)
[email protected]