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Numo Blafo II – Public Relations Officer Par Excellence (1)

Feature Article Numo Blafo II – Public Relations Officer Par Excellence 1
APR 28, 2017 LISTEN

–Lee Kuan Yew

“A crisis that reoccurs a second time is a crisis that must not occur again. a well-managed plant, I soon learned is a quiet place. a well-managed factory is boring. Nothing exciting happens in it because the crises have been anticipated and have been converted into routine” –Peter Drucker

Before and after the elections, Nana Akufo-Addo NPP administration made and continues to make many promises all in the spirited attempt to change the deplorable image the blackman has created for himself among the developed comity of nations. As far as I am concerned, one of the most earthquake promises made by Nana Akufo-Addo so far which is going to send shock waves reverberating far beyond the epicenter of the earthquake promise is what the DAILY GRAPHIC reported on its front page of Monday, April 24, 2017. The president is reported to have said in a double decker headline: “I'll make Accra cleanest city in Africa – President” Note, he said Africa and not the world and thus perhaps mitigating the enormous amount of work involved. Did he make that promise overwhelmed by the goodwill exhibited by the leadership of the Gas on him? Remember, despite the fact that the late Prime Minster, Prof. K. A. Busia was married to a Ga woman, the Gas especially Makola market women never ceased insulting him

When I was growing up in the then pristine environment of my holy parental village of Adansi Brofoyedru, one of the cardinal principles I came to experience and accept was law and order and cleanliness. Tuesdays were reserved for communal labour where the entire citizens of the community gathered to do communal labour. This generally involved the weeding of bushes and clearing of filth which were judiciously disposed of in a manner which will make the latter day saints of the Environmental Protection Council candidates for redeployment for non-performance, galamsey conditionalities. All household refuses were gathered at a central point and burnt on a regular basis.

The public toilets were sited far away from the residential area and public spirited individuals usually dumped corn cobs close to the toilet places where visitors to the toilet facilities who wanted to reduce their weights could use as improvised toilet rolls. Government sanitary inspectors popularly known in local parlance as “tankasi” came round houses on routine on surprise inspections to test the stage of hygiene of households typically dipping long handle ladders into water bowls to satisfy themselves that no unwanted biological growth was hiding deep inside the bottom of the containers storing drinking water.

So can anybody imagine the first cultural shock I had when I was admitted at Mfantsipim and found myself in Cape Coast for my secondary education? For the first time in my life I witnessed filthy scanty clothed kids rummaging through dustbins looking for left over foods to eat. This was a clear case of a combination of poverty, societal neglect, corruption and leadership failure and incompetence beyond imagination in a typical urban area. That scene stayed with me. When I moved to Accra to continue my university education, I began to understand why Allah himself is the Minister of Health for the forgotten people of this part of the world. Without the Gracious and Ever-merciful Allah, considering the filth and utter neglect around us, the blackman would have died at childbirth. Which means also that the mother herself would have died at childbirth so there will be no blackman alive.

Why do we as people create so much filth but yet do not develop the capacity and competence to clear it. Why do we as people deliberately create so much organised disorder which affects our wellbeing, our health and by extension our life expectancy and yet we care less about it. It is just like the university professor who teaches community health which to my illiterate mind is big euphemism for hygiene. You go to his house and he is eating and the daughter is urinating by the dinner table. You point the infringement out to the noble professor and he waves it aside with a smile and the words: “it is nothing”,

The other day, some FM station hosts were discussing filth within Accra and they almost got themselves crazy referring to herds of cow defecating on Accra streets while on a routine marchpast far in contrast to what we often witness of the dignified walk by superior court judges on the high street following the observance of the legal year church service. To the uninitiated while the superior court judges might look like masqueraders imported form Simpa land, the herd of cows constitute an affront to the civilization of our modern times. Additionally what the FM hosts failed to recollect was that filth in our environment is not constituted by only a mountain of uncollected rubbish.

The uncontrolled bizarre confrontation on our streets and roads between pedestrians and motorists which result in the maiming and death of both innocent and recalcitrant foolhardy citizens displaying little or no sense of safety and personal security is a daily occurrence and constitute filth. The blaring of loudspeakers by travelling, untrained and illiterate itinerant guest street preachers who mostly belong to certain religious faith and constitute a complete nuisance to shop owners and shoppers alike falls into the category of filth. The selfish unrepentant street traders who have taken over the foot paths meant for pedestrians and even streets thus forcing the pedestrians to do a goat fight with oncoming vehicles constitutes filth. The pseudo entrepreneurs who take over pedestrian walkways during the late afternoons and evening and turn them into drinking spots where persons with obvious mind disabilities uncaring for the danger to themselves from speeding vehicles close to those place of enjoyment constitutes filth.

The gross indiscipline and break down of law and order do not assail only Accra. Take a trip to Kumasi and one will weep for the citizens whose social and economic movements have been restricted by their own complacencies. When the Queen of Great Britain dubbed Kumasi the “Garden City” it was not for nothing. Today Kumasi has become the “Garbage City”. Kumasi is the only town in this country where the words of a reigning monarch constitute supreme law. Kumasi has the added advantage of constituted authority based on the nation's constitution. So why should Kumasi suffer the ignominy of a decaying town, a town where modern rising commercial buildings without attendant commercial facilities like in-built car parks constitute complete filth and nuisance to the people crippling vehicular and pedestrian movements with dire effect on commercial and social lives. At any time I am at Adum, I weep for the commercial vehicle drivers whose means of livelihood has been grossly restricted by choked streets.

E-mail: [email protected]
BY Kwame Gyasi

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