With every passing day, the decline of Ghana appears to accelerate - Dumsor, unemployment, depreciation of the Cedi, a health service in turmoil, bird flu, a weakening of financial services – the list is endless.
The nation is rotting; a rot that is spreading like cancer, eating away at the fabric of the nation whilst burdening Ghanaians with many associate iniquities.
Much ink has been spilled on the national debacle that is dumsor, a source of collective national wailing and gnashing of the teeth. It is a millstone that has weighed heavily around the necks of Ghanaians, with the ultimate price being death of innocent Ghanaians, in addition to collapse of businesses, an increase in the cost of living, the exacerbation of the woes of already struggling health service, an escalation in crime due to the cover darkness facilitates for the activities of the criminals in our midst and so on and so forth. Every Ghanaian can narrate his or her own personal story of dumsor. It is a national joke that is now beyond parody. It is serious.
And yet the sitting government, led by an incompetent president residing in his ivory towers, continues to twiddle their thumbs, paying lip service to solving the problem whilst Ghanaians continue to suffer - new-borns delivered by the dim glow of a mobile phone screen, food rendered inedible whilst refrigerators cease, students studying by the inadequate lambency of candlelight and patients dying in hospitals due to life-saving equipment being rendered useless. It is in the health service where the effects of dumsor are most acute. For here it is a matter of life and death. The bird flu virus is already in the country, it being in its incipient stages in poultry. Should it jump species to the human populace, given the inadequacies of the health service made worse by dumsor, one wonders how the nation would cope. The NHIS scheme has already been decimated to a shell of what it should be – a provider of affordable healthcare for Ghanaians. A bird flu epidemic, would effectively serve as its death knell.
Despite dumsor plaguing every facet of Ghanaian life, it appears that the government is deaf, blind and dumb to what it has inflicted on the populace.
The poor business climate, that dumsor has only served to exacerbate, has compounded the nation’s unemployment problem. The private sector is a key driver of any dynamic economy. A nation with a private sector of thriving businesses, provides jobs for growth and prosperity. And yet, what do we see in Ghana? Many businesses are folding up and laying off workers due to the dire prevailing economic conditions which has been worsened by dumsor. To add salt to injury, these businesses who have contributed so much to the growth of this country, are now being referred to as not "smart" simply because of the measures they have been forced to take in order to stay in business. Take a stroll through any of our urban centres, big city or large town, and one can witness hordes of idle youths – either unemployed or unemployable. Businesses are struggling, hence they do not have the capacity to absorb the mass of the unskilled unemployed. Where there is a desperate need for skilled labour, businesses struggle to recruit as our education system, even at graduate level, has failed to equip its charges with even the basics to meet the needs of business.
Further compounding the inclement business climate is the withering Ghana Cedi. Today, 1 Ghana Cedi is equivalent to 25 US Cents. Compare this to 2.8 US Dollars in 2014 and it is evident that the decline of the national currency has been precipitous. As a consequence, the cost of imports has increased, which in turn has increased the cost of doing business - costs which result in increases in the cost of living for the average Ghanaian. The depreciation of the value of the Cedi in our pocket has happened under the watch of a financially and economically inept government who, due to said ineptness, were compelled to run to the IMF to bail them out with a burdensome loan, the costs of which we will all bear in due course. Yet again, several years after the debt relief that weighed on us heavily for years, we find ourselves running to the same Bretton-Woods institution under whose yoke we were tied to for years, due to the government’s financial imprudence and incompetence. Ghanaians, yet again, are trapped in the vicious cycle of government mismanagement, borrowing and debt. It is when this debt is due to be repaid that Ghanaians will realise the scale of the burden of debt that has been placed on their heads. We are extremely concerned.
All the aforementioned problems cannot be looked at in isolation, they are all interlinked. An inadequate power supply does not engender the fertile business environment, which a depreciating currency serves to compound. A fallow business environment leads to unemployment. Unemployed people do not pay taxes and hence public services, such as education and health, suffer. Yet despite the seriousness of the situation, solutions from the government to arrest the rot are not forthcoming.
Underpinning these documented problems is a culture of graft and endemic corruption, propagated by a number of venal individuals, in public institutions tasked with serving the public. This culture afflicts not only the government, but also public bodies – the likes of ECG and the Agricultural Development Bank being prime examples. The strike action taken by employees of the latter is indicative of how fed-up Ghanaians are with the status quo. The government would do well to take heed. Concerned Ghanaians will be at the forefront in highlighting and voicing these issues in the most vocal manner. Ghanaians will not be silenced any longer.
Concerned Ghanaians therefore call on government to sit up and address the various issues raised in this release with the same speed and alacrity it employs in covering up corrupt members of government. As a group we will be marshaling all constitutionally protected means to ensure this is done. Place: Accra
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