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Mr Richmond Lankwei Lamptey, a leading member of the Progressives People’s Party (PPP), has stated that the minds of the people of this country are not in the 21st century though we refer to activities and use things that are invented or made in the 21st century.

Addressing the topic ‘Are We In The 21st Century Yet?’ on Ghana Great And Strong show last Saturday night with Dr. Papa Kwesi Ndum on ATV, Mr Lamptey said Ghanaians need to know the importance of cutting down noise making and how it does us good and shouldn’t hide it behind any mysticism.

‘There are 21st century invented things that we are using in Ghana but I don’t think the minds of all the people are in the 21st century.

First of all I want to start by saying it is very good to have a period of silence in any settlement because researchers have said or believe that noise can cause hearing impairments, overtime, hypertension, sleep disturbance, changes in the immune system and all that so it actually good to cut down on noise every so often but people must know the real reason and not hide it behind any mysticism because if these things are clouded in secrecy and mysticism they lose their value when people get to know that these things might not be the case after all’ he said.

According to him people should associate their problems to scientific reason why they can’t get what they want. He admits traditional believes are still there, they remain, they don’t change and people want to keep to them but when new knowledge comes, people should try and update their believes and make them relevant to the current environment.

He further noted that our gods doesn’t detest or afraid of development. ‘Our gods would want to see nice roads, good drainage system and they don’t want us to be living in this same column where if you go to places like Denmark they import waste to generate electricity and for us human waste are dumped directly in the sea in the capital in the full glare of everybody. Today as I speak to you we are doing it.

So I don’t see that we are in the 21st century because in the 21st century people are doing wonderful things, we have driverless cars moving around, moving around on GPRS and all that. We cannot simply harvest rain water to irrigate our farms, to turn our dams and to do all manner of things but any time it going to rain, a blessing, everyone wants to hide because they are afraid for the rain to come down.

So now when somebody now attributes it to gods been angry because some people went on a vigil, they didn’t make noise as far as I know because the generators that I hear in my ears when lights goes off every time they are noisier than any other noise that anybody can make.

The gods are now able to distinguish between noises and they accept generator noise, it is okay but when human being go down to campaign against things that is affecting all of us, affecting businesses they get angry and kill people? For me it makes it difficult to believe that we are in the 21st century although we are using things made in the 21st century’ he stated.