It was 11:00 a.m. yesterday. The heavy rains in Accra the previous day had made the ground wet and slippery. On the positive side, the rainfall had influenced the weather to be mild, soothing the pain of many hard-up Ghanaians.
Even the hard-up trekking on foot to honour various obligations that would put food on the table did not find the weather intimidating.
Even then, when I saw the middle aged man wielding a machete on the road, fear gripped me to the marrow. Stories of people in such situations running amok and butchering those they come into contact with raced with many other weird situations in the mind.
When he spoke, it was to request for financial assistance. �Look at my stomach,� the man with the machete mimicked in perfect English, removing the T-shirt covering the flat body. �I had nothing to eat yesterday. I have not eaten either this morning,� he intoned.
When I asked the man why he had denied his own body food, he gave a long lecture about how he was declared redundant at one of the state enterprises more than 15 years ago, when the establishment was put on divestiture. His redundancy payment, he said, virtually in tears, is still outstanding. For the past 15 years, he has tried without success to find a job that would keep body and soul together.
Of late, he had resorted to cutting grass to feed a neighbour�s sheep, for which he is paid a pittance. Yesterday�s rains meant that he was unable to honour his obligation, and had to pay the price by going to bed on an empty stomach.
He added that since he has been unable to take care of the family, his wife had abandoned their matrimonial home, taking the three children along.
At the health centre at Gomoa Oguaa in the Central Region, a Class Six pupil, so horribly young that her breasts are not even developed, was rushed in at the weekend in labour. After a few hours of trying without success, she was referred to the Apam Government Hospital, where she required a caesarian operation. The good news is that both the little mother and the baby are responding to treatment.
The story is told that the father of this Class Six pupil has found it very challenging keeping body and soul of the family together in the harsh economic climate. The innocent little girl was lured by an apprentice electrician, who took advantage of her innocence. By the time it was discovered that she was in the family way, the apprentice had left Gomoa Akropong, where they both lived. The poor girl�s family is unable to afford the medical fees, and the poor mother never had any ante-natal care until labour set in.
In this economic mess, the father of the little girl had to leave the new mother and her baby at the hospital, while he came home looking for a loan to get them released.
What happened to the state policy of offering expectant mothers free medication is one of the myths of rolling out a �Better Ghana� policy, with nationals unable to benefit from state largesse? Far from this society getting better, Ghanaians are reeling under some of the most austere policies ever chartered in the name of social interventions, since the former Gold Coast was declared independent of British colonial rule in the wee hours of Wednesday, March 6, 1957.
That the average Ghanaian is suffering under the so-called social democratic policies of the John Dramani Mahama-led administration is as clear as today is Wednesday. Nothing seems to be working in this society, beyond the fact that President Mahama is still at Government House.
Nothing else seems to be working in favour of the average Ghanaian. Even the little subsidies the Ghanaian enjoyed from killer utility bills have been removed. On Sunday, just before Christians prepared to say their morning prayers, the National Petroleum Authority announced new petroleum tariffs.
At the moment, a gallon of diesel, as well as its super counterpart, sell for GH�9.50 in a country where the minimum wage is GH�5.24. In effect, it takes nearly two days wages to buy a gallon of petrol in Mahama�s Ghana. The bad news for the already hard-up Ghanaian is that the utility companies � water and electricity � are ganging up to fleece 100 percent hike from the hapless Ghanaian.
Ghana must be the only country on earth where increases in utilities are demanded in terms of 100 percent. In 2010, electricity tariffs went up by as much as 89 percent. We were told that the quantum increase was to reduce inefficiency and make supply more reliable.
For nearly one year, electricity supply has been so erratic that power outages have earned a new name in this country � Dum-so Dum-so. Not too long ago, social media announced that President John Mahama had been installed a chief. His stool name, Dear Reader is: Odi Ghana Sika Nana Dum-so Akomfemhene I. Quite interesting! Is it not?
On October 30, 2012, then Acting President John Mahama told a rather bewildered nation that the power outages, which had crippled industry and reduced the nationals to cave-dwellers, would end on November 15, the same year. The news in this announcement is that when the deadline arrived, the outages rather intensified.
From last Saturday until mid-day on Monday, I could not be reached by phone. I had gone to the holy village with my phone losing power. When I got to Ekumfi Ekrawfo, the whole of the
Ekumfi area was in darkness. Unfortunately for me, when I returned to Accra the next day, there was power outage at my humble residential area. By the time power was restored in the evening, I discovered that I had left the charger at Ekumfi Ekrawfo.
I had to buy a new charger on Monday before joining the international community on phone. The interesting thing about this development was that I got a very important call from London on Sunday. Immediately I picked the phone, the power went off.
What is intriguing about power outages in Ghana is the belated admission by the Electricity Company of Ghana that, after all, the shortfall in supply has been occasioned by the state�s inability to fund crude oil purchases to run the Aboadze Thermal Plant.
It is not as if it is a new development. Some of us have known all along that adequate supply of crude oil to the plant would guarantee enough power supply to serve the country all the time. Somehow, government officials and their sycophantic communicators had blamed factors other than the inadequate supply of crude oil for our problems.
In all these developments, there has been a choreographed attempt to take away the indebtedness of the government and its agencies to the Electricity of Company of Ghana from the equation. The government and its agencies, we are told, are indebted to the tune of GH�800 million (about $400).
We need no ghost to underline the fact that the electricity generating and transmission companies would be able to take care of themselves, if and when this colossal debt is settled.
While we cry over electricity, water is supplied in tots in both the urban and rural communities. At Ekumfi Ekrawfo and its surrounding towns and villages, water has never dropped for nearly two years now.
Somehow, the contractor engaged to re-construct the Essuehyia-Ajumako road, removed all pipes in the town. When the town�s folks complained, the assurance was given that the Essarkyir Water Works would be completed in time for water to flow from pipes throughout the Ekumfi District by the end of last February.
Yesterday, the Daily Graphic published a story and two pictures from the treatment plant at Gomoa Antseadze, with the information that the water project for Ekumfi is 95 percent complete. What good old Graphic failed to add is what constitutes the 95 percent being bandied about.
As you read this piece, the pipelines are not on the ground in many communities in the Ekumfi District. I am told that the state would need extra money to lay pipes in the northern half of the project. In other words, the Essarkyir Water Works is far from complete.
It is certainly not the only project which sprung up in the run-up to the 2012 elections, and which appears to have lost the enthusiasm for completion. In other words, the desire for votes might have influenced the zeal with which these projects were begun.
The welfare of the Ghanaian, touted into the high heavens as the reason to vote the National Democratic Congress to retain power, clearly, has lost out in the reality of the economic hardships facing the people.
At the time President Mahama was warning Ghanaians that the economy was down to bare bones, his administration had just doled out GH�32 million of state money to a private venture for an aforestation project that could not be found on the ground. There is the infamous GH�15 million guinea fowl project too. The interesting bit about this project is that the birds are said to have migrated to Burkina Faso.
Welcome to the concept of Better Ghana. For the mass of the people though, life in Better Ghana is turning out to be rather bitter.
This nation, I am afraid, is on the slippery road to self-destruction!
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