Black Wednesday: Carelessness, Negligence And The Political Twitter Jokes

File photo

I am sad, I am in grieve and pain, I am mourning - my soul, heart body and brains are bombarding like never before. I am in such a sorrowful mood because my family, your family and our family members are gone for good. Until perhaps we meet in the heavens, we cannot call them our loved ones again.

I wish to extend my condolences to the whole Ghanaian and most especially to the individual families who have lost their precious loved ones in last Wednesday's gory tragedy at Kintampo. I share in their grieves and pains too not because I also lost a loved one but because I am a Ghanaian and they that lost their innocent lives are also Ghanaians. They are my fellow country men and women. May their gentle souls rest in perfect peace.

The spirit of mother Ghana is weeping for she has lost a huge human resources. If I can recall rightly, the last time we encountered such huge human loss was on June 3rd,2015. Must we continue to lose precious citizens and human resources to accidents barely every one year?

It beats my imaginations when such tragedies comes but we don't find lasting solutions to them. I am not saying what happened last Wednesday was the fault of any person because accidents are unforeseen and inevitable but what happens after such accidents have occurred can be attributed to human mistakes and negligence.

People have been giving so many concerns after the incident. Some are very annoying to hear or read them. I read a news article on one of Ghana's news portals that, the driver in front of the metro mass bus was possibly sleeping before the incident happened....this they say was according to an eyewitness. Assuming without admitting the fact that the driver was sleeping, can we solely blame him for that? Were the passengers in the car asleep too that they could not alert to driver to take a rest?

Somewhere in 2011, I was traveling to Tarkwa in a sprinter bus...at a point the driver was speeding more than I could contain. I was in the front seat of the bus; it was only one seat so only myself and the driver was in the front section of the brand new sprinter bus. In between Obuasi and Dunkwa on-offin, I realized the driver was dozing...yes he was! The car jumped into pot-holes for more than three times and just after it, that was the moment the driver would realize and come back to normalcy.

....As confused as I was in front of the car, I asked the driver if he was feeling sleepy but he said no. But I knew he was lying. My only prayer was for us to get to Dunkwa so I will report him to the police officers at the Dunkwa Atekyem police station. God finally got us there and I intentionally told the driver to make a stop for me pass out water and he obliged. I went straight to the police officer at the counter and reported our driver was dozing. As honorable as a police officer will be, he followed me to the car and ordered the driver stop and take some rest.

To be honest, most of the passengers didn't take it lightly with me...they insulted and villified me but I did not care. After all, I was protecting me own life. The insults continued but to our surprise, the driver slept for more than 40mins before we continued the journey. On the way from Dunkwa, the driver asked how I managed to master the courage to do that but said to him, as human as we are, we can not cheat nature. When a man needs a sleep, he can not do anything meaningful until he satisfy the body of sleep. We had a long chat from that point and he even gave me his mobile number. Today, Senior Joe as he is affectionately called is my friend. Sometimes we as passengers must insist on our rights because life os sacred.

I also think from Kumasi to Tamale is such a long journey for the metro mass busses to be having only a driver. They to have get backups! I have traveled to Tamale and Damongo before so I really know what it means for only a driver to be driving such a bus with huge number of passengers. We must have our priorities right as a nation and people. Other rumors says the bus was somewhat faulty...a state owned transport system is left to deteriorate without any care. Just because its government owned? It is sad for us to live in such a country. A driver at the metro mass station at Abrepo junction (Kumasi) after the accident told me, he can attest to the fact that some of the busses have been in the use for more than three years with no maintenance work on them...what a pity?

Again, I blame no one for the accident but I can blame somebody for the numerous deaths after the accident. Kintampo government hospital was the nearest health facility to take care of all emergencies after the accident. They have only one ambulance car which can carry at most two persons at a time. As even with those who were rushed to the hospital in other cars, I am told were dumped on the bare floors because there were no beds for them to sleep on.

No emergency drugs, inadequate health personnels and lack of other necessities caused more to die. But we have a ministry responsible for health which is annually given taxpayers monies to guarantee our health needs such as what happened at Kintampo. Greed is has taken over our leaders to do what will benefit Ghanaians at their own gains. They spend our monies to themselves.

As if that was not enough, I also heard some ministers after the accident was flown in a helicopter to Kintampo hospital. To me, it was not a bad thing to do but what makes it bad is that, the so- called leaders left all the way from Accra to Kintampo with nothing. They didn't go with drugs, beds, and even a backup of medical officers to compensate the inadequate staff at Kintampo. Not as if they didn't know that the Kintampo facility lacked all these things..they knew but as some bunch of careless and useless politicians, they refused to think. Yes they didn't think of the lives we were loosing but their political expediency. None of the politicians that went there was in the capacity to even treat a patient of headache so what was the merit of their emergency flight to the place? Perhaps to watch more people die? Are we serious as a nation? Do we have priorities? Do our "I care for you" politicians of this time understand what it means to loose such human resources?

I heard the president took to his twitter page to express his shock over the incident. Good but it was needless. A president don't wait till state transports kills many citizens before he goes to social media to shed crocodile tears. Invest in our stated owned transports. Set priorities in our transport sector to reduce such disasters, Mr President. You branded your images on busses which are weak in body and capable of killing your nationals with huge sums of Ghana cedis without thinking of maintaining them first to make them safe and strong for use?

Mr presdient, Ghanaians are not mediocres. Don't take us for granted. Your twitter messages will not bring back the souls we have lost but if you had put in much efforts in improving our transport busses, you could have saved all these people. Please sack your irresponsible health ministers. They lack ideas. They could have ordered for a back up medical team to beef up the situation in Kintampo or better still that helicopter could have been used to transfer most of the injured passengers to bigger health facilities like KATH,KORLE-BU,Tamale teaching hospital and 37 military hospital. If this was done, it was possible we could have saved more lives instead of some bunch of greedy ministers wasting state resources on fuel and allowances that very day.

We deserve the best. Ghana is the only hope for you and I. It is our land and home.

God bless our homeland Ghana and make our nation great and strong.

The writer:
Richard Sarpong
(An agriculturist and entrepreneur)
Email: [email protected]