Ghanaians Want Real Change Now

Every nation needs wise leaders able to choose the most suitable individuals to head the critical institution's of state needed to ensure that progress is made in the nation-building process.

In light of that vital requirement, it is most unfortunate that so many of the members of our nation's political class lack the ability to think creatively to help resolve some of the myriad of problems bedeviling our country and hobbling its transformation into a prosperous society.

It makes one wonder how as a people we can possibly justify continuing to spend billions of cedis annually providing government ministers and high-level public-sector officials with fat salaries, sundry allowances and all manner of perks just to enable them lead comfortable lives at hapless taxpayers' expense, with nothing much in return for Ghanaian society's long-term benefit to show for it at the end of their tenures.

The question is: If many of our politicians and the upper echelons of the public-sector are mostly unable to think outside the box (to use a hackneyed phrase) to help resolve the myriad of problems bedeviling Ghanaian society, why continue pouring hard-to-find money down the financial equivalent of a blackhole through which almost 70 percent of total revenue raised by the Ghana Revenue Authority and other revenue-raising government departments and agencies and other entities in the public-sector regularly disappear in the form of overly-generous compensation packages?:

Apparently, Hon. Anthony Karbo, the deputy minister for roads, in acknowledging the atrocious state most of Ghana's road network is in, presently (now the rains are here), is reported to have stated that the government could not raise the needed loans to repair those deplorable roads we are forced to travel on across Ghana.

The question there is: Why do these genuises whom we perversely elect to ruin our quality of life and lower the living standards of so many families in Ghana every four years, without fail, think that borrowing money is the only way to build nations in this day and age? Haaba.

For starters, is it not incredibly daft, for example, that as a people we do not directy link the collection of road tolls to the construction and maintenance of roads in Ghana? Ebeeii.

And why do the genuises who govern our country never think of advertising globally to invite bids from companies to tender to self-finance the building and maintenance of such tolled roads for maximum 35-year periods within which they will not have to pay any taxes on their profits? Ditto self-finance the building, maintain and running of passenger and freight trains on railway lines to all the regional capitals from Accra, on the same generous terms and conditions?

Above all, this blog humbly suggests that the ministerial team in charge of the roads ministery should travel to Jamshirpur, the city built and owned by the Tata conglomerate, to see the plastic roads its subsidiary Jusco has built there with simple and easily transferable technology (mixing melted plastic waste with bitumen) that the Building and Road Research Institute (BRRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) can acquire and train road contractors in Ghana to leverage.

For the information of those now in charge of the roads ministry, plastic roads have a lifespan that is three times longer than that of conventional bitumen roads. They also bear heavier loads, remain pothole-free throughout their long lifespan, and, because plastic is impermeable to water, are never washed away by flash floods.

Is it not a testament to the ignorance and provincial-mindedness afflicting some of the members of our political class that they neither know nor understand that plastic roads can provide Ghana with much needed disaster resilience at a time when extreme weather events resulting from global climate change can wipe out most of our existing road network in a few hours of heavy rains causing widespread flooding across the nation? Hmm, Oman Ghana - eyeasem o.

With the planned time-frame for the attainment of all the SDGs only a little under a decade and half away, there is no time to waste - Ghanaians want change. Real change. Now, not tomorrow. For heaven's sake, the unproductive politicians amongst those now in charge of our homeland Ghana, who have not done so yet, must put their creative-thinking-caps on now. Haaba.