Salvaging the ship of state
Our country has been going through challenges in various sectors of the economy.
The economy is at the crossroads. The health sector is under strain, the educational sector has to contend with falling standards, indisciplined behaviour cuts across all ages of the population and unemployment stares many young people, including university graduates, in the face.
What is frightening is the fact that every day new challenges emerge that beat our imagination and wits. We are compelled to always ask when any solution will be in sight to offer the people some relief.
All Ghanaians have a role to play in resolving the present economic difficulties but the onus lies on the government to initiate the necessary policy interventions to put the economy back on an even keel.
We think it is important for the government to speed up the processes of curing the structural deficiencies in the economy that have made the state to rely on donors to balance its budget.
The Daily Graphic is happy that the government has put in place a ‘home-grown’ policy to restructure the economy.
It is against this background that we think Professor Kwesi Botchway, a former Minister of Finance, took off the gloom and the doom that hung over the country when he spoke at the Distinguished Speakers Lecture Series at the Central University College (CUC) at Miotso in the Greater Accra Region last Tuesday.
He said Ghana had been in deeper economic crisis before, especially in the early 1980s when the economy was on the verge of collapse and the country was perilously on the brink of disintegration.
The extreme politicisation of issues, the winner-takes-all policy in the governance of the country and corruption are eroding the gains made by the people since Independence.
The Daily Graphic expects everybody to contribute to nation-building because if the ship of state sinks, all of us in the ship, irrespective of our political colour, would drown.
Ghana must be brought back on track to provide the needs of the people. This requires a new thinking and a re-direction of the state machinery to find a speedy solution to the challenges that have slowed down the development of the country.
But we ought to return to the cherished values of our society where people are rewarded on merit and hard work and not for political patronage and rent seeking.
The Daily Graphic calls on the leaders of state and others in the various sectors to mobilise the people for the next stage of Ghana’s renaissance, which must begin now.
