Ghana can bounce back

To say Ghanaians are eager and perhaps impatient to see development and improved living standards in their lives will be an understatement.

The desire of the people to witness socio-economic development stems partly from the current information revolution age that has made it possible for the people to get a great deal of compressed information in a short time and be brought closer to the real world. The information revolution has placed more responsibility on governments and authorities to expedite development to satisfy the ever-anxious populace who at the click of the bottom see the massive development going on around the world.

Indeed, the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, with this in mind, on assumption of office, rightly said he was in a hurry for results. This was in sync with Kwame Nkrumah’s affirmation that “the Black man is capable of managing his own affairs”.

True to the President’s word, the government in the past two years has initiated several development-oriented programmes and policies. The Free Senior High School programme is on course, the processing of the national identification cards is in progress, the provision of dams in communities is ongoing and there is massive work being done in the rail sector.

The Vice-President, Dr Mahamadu Bawumia, announced last Wednesday that 79 of the factories under the government’s One district, One factory (1D1F) programme are expected to be ready by the end of the year.

The Daily Graphic has received this news with a lot of satisfaction. Upon the start of production, the number of people who will be engaged to reduce the number of our unemployed youth can be anyone’s guess.

We applaud the government for what it has been able to achieve within this period in power. As we praise the government for the feat so far achieved, we would like to remind it that more work is ahead to be done to fulfil its promises to the electorate, and as such it should not lose focus but persevere with the task ahead.

We also caution that Ghana has travelled this way before after independence. During the First Republic, hundreds of factories were established, which were to launch Ghana into the league of industrialised countries. But those factories are a pale shadow of themselves today as we struggle as a country to restart all over.

Some of the problems identified to have militated against the many industries established in the First Republic were the lack of qualified personnel to man these factories. There was also the absence of raw materials to feed the industries. Political interference was yet one major evil that haunted our factories out of existence.

It is the hope of the Daily Graphic that the current government has taken a cue from all these occurrences in the history of the country and will let such historic lessons guide it as it rolls out its programmes, so that in subsequent years we will not have factories that are being established today being abandoned and becoming places of worship and warehouses.

The Daily Graphic, therefore, urges the government to listen to all suggestions concerning its programmes and adopt those that are intended to enrich its programmes while ensuring that these factories are run purely on business lines devoid of politics, especially in terms of appointment of management members.

Ghana surely will bounce back as the Black Star and hope of Africa.