"Ghanaians attitude to time is disgusting"- Quashigah

The Minister of Health, Major Courage Quashigah (retd), has expressed disgust at the Ghanaian concept of time.

He noted that there was no way Ghanaians could achieve a middle-income status if they continued to ignore the essence of time in wealth creation and productivity.

Making the call during an awards dinner night in honour of outgoing members of the Ghana Health Service (GHS) Council, Food and Drugs Board (FDB) and the Pharmacy Council in Accra last Friday, Major Quashigah advised Ghanaians, particularly the working force, to change their attitude to time.

He noted that the situation where people attended functions very late because they expected that everybody else would be late should stop.

Major Quashigah who had to wait for more than one hour for some of the invited guests including the award winners as well as some organizers of the programme to turn up for the function, later told the Graphic that it had always been a problem to him when people went to functions very late and ended up distracting everybody's attention, and wasting everybody's time.

"If Ghana is to increase its productivity, workers in all sectors need to change their attitude, since time is necessary for wealth creation," he said.

Major Quashigah indicated that the Ghanaian concept of time should not be different from how people in the western world managed their time.

"Time does not wait for anybody. To the businessman every bit of time counts and not until we change our attitude to time, there is no way we are going to move forward and even think of attaining a middle-income status by the year 2020," he said.

When asked whether he had been making the call to his colleague ministers and other high-ranking public officials, Major Quashigah said he had to start the campaign from somewhere and that was why he was an admonishing worker in his own sector first.

He said he was definitely not pleased with public officials who went to functions very late.

The Health Minister said he had had the occasion to sanction workers who went to functions late at the Ministry of Food and Agriculture, where he served as a minister and hinted that at the appropriate opportunity he would sanction latecomers at the Health Ministry.

He said it was very embarrassing to see even some journalists going to functions very late "I have even refused entry to some journalists at certain ceremonies because they came late."

Major Quashigah, who was apparently upset by the attitude of some of the invited guests and the organizers, refused to deliver any speech but only admonished workers to be conscious of time.