We need all professionals in discourse on national issues

Ghana is blessed with many professionals who cut across all the sectors and belong to various professional bodies.

The professional bodies mostly focus on matters of concern to their membership, including the maintenance of accepted standards and ethics, their remuneration and other welfare matters.

We do not begrudge them for championing matters relating to the welfare of the members of the different professions such as engineering, medicine, nursing, teaching, among others.

However, the Daily Graphic believes that people do not learn trades or vocations only for their personal benefit or gain but for the benefit of the society in which they live.

In that case, we opine that all professionals should be concerned and be involved in finding solutions to national challenges, especially those that fall under their purview.

Unfortunately, the Daily Graphic finds that the various professionals and technocrats have been missing in national discourse on the issues outlined, preferring rather to distance themselves from such discussions and allowing politicians and non-professionals to rather proffer solutions to the challenges.

Some experts even decline to comment on issues of national importance when they are approached by journalists for fear of being put in pigeonholes or seen in a bad light by their appointing authorities.

As is to be expected, the nation has been groping in the dark, looking for solutions to its myriad of problems, because those who have the technical know-how have not been involved.

The fear among professionals has also been that when they bring out the issues as they are and point out the faults that have resulted in disasters and challenges, they will be labelled as belonging to a particular political party.

Their fears cannot be said to be unfounded, because the vociferous ones who have spoken on burning issues have sometimes been labelled as belonging to a particular camp because they have taken a position divergent to the one held by the establishment.

The Daily Graphic posits that politicising issues and comments on them is not the way to develop as a country. 

If we have the expertise to help us deal with the challenges bedevilling our country, we must count ourselves blessed and rather tap from the rich pool of knowledge we have.

We do not have the moral right to lament the brain drain when we refuse to take advantage of the rich human resource that we have.    

It is in this vein that we laud the Ghana Institution of Engineers (GhIE) for its efforts to put together the “Engineers’ Bible”, a document that contains expert knowledge and solutions to key national development challenges.

We believe that the ability of the document to address key challenges such as the perennial floods, power outages and poor roads, as well as the proposed establishment of a National Engineering Advisory Review Council (NEARC) to provide advisory services for engineers and make inputs into government policies, holds the key to sustainable development. 

The Daily Graphic, therefore, urges other professional bodies to emulate the GhIE example and help the country find lasting solutions to its problems.