Conditions for approving E-Levy

On behalf of more than half the population of Ghana who are opposed to the Electronic Transaction Levy (E-Levy), I want to sign a pact with President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.

We will approve his E-Levy in return for the following:

He must swear to discontinue the use of that private super luxury jet which he rents for his trips.
Ghanaians are so acquainted with hardships that anything suggesting a life of luxury sins against the very nature of the social contract he signed with the people of Ghana.

If he desires to be in the hearts of Ghanaians for all time, as President Kufuor does, long after his term, here is a piece of my mind.

To continue to use that aircraft will amount to telling Ghanaians that “mo ka no koraa na meye no more”.

Abandon all plans to buy a new presidential jet. Far from being unimportant, the case is that its time is not now.
Sacrifices and belt-tightening must be a two-way street. If ordinary Ghanaians are abandoning even tro-tro to go by foot (because of transport fare increases, occasioned by fuel price hikes, which have become a weekly affair), we cannot expect less from our President.

Why must we pay above GH¢10,000 a month (!) to members of the National Media Commission (NMC)?
It is a useful constitutional body and the members are doing a yeoman’s job, but why must the poor be burdened under the yoke of COVID-induced and government-inflicted economic hardships, while only a few meetings (even if they are life-and-death) earn a class of people in excess of GH¢10,000,00 a month!

It is morally reprehensible, totally unjustifiable as doctors toil day and night saving people from death, often summoned by phone from the comfort of their beds in the middle of the night?

Nurses are emptying toilet pans into which bedfast patients have moved their bowels - like mere latrine-boys.

Parliament must be told to stay where they are. A new Parliament building is a luxury we can do without, for now.
It is economically unjustifiable in our present circumstances.

We must put a stop to any plan to create new constituencies and, therefore, increase the number of MPs.

The 1992 Constitution calls for it, yes, but the constitution was made for man. As matters stand now, even the present 275 are about 100 too many.

Self-inflicted

Aren’t some of our hardships self-inflicted?

I have, since 2017, asked why any black African government, with an economy as tattered as we have in Ghana, should pay allowances to teacher and nursing trainees?

Allowances made sense in the mid-to-late 1950s immediately after independence when the country desperately needed teachers and nurses.

But that paradigm has shifted since the mid-to-late 1990s. Today, senior high school (SHS) graduates are paying bribes to be admitted to nursing and teacher training schools. 

Private nursing schools are springing up like Japanese mushrooms. Worse, we are barely able to afford their salaries when they pass out.

Bawumia is finding it hard to withdraw it because the mantra, “we shall restore nursing and teacher training allowances”, came from his mouth in 2016.

I suspect that the New Patriotic Party’s (NPP) only reason for maintaining the allowances is the fear of what National Democratic Congress (NDC) will say.

Free SHS is great: it should continue forever; however, isn’t it time to listen to Ken Ofori Atta?

One of his first statements as Finance Minister in 2017 was that he would have wished that the scheme was made optional.

Citing his own circumstances, he suggested that people like him who could (and can) afford to pay must be given the freedom to do so.

No government (apart from Gadhafi’s Libya) runs a country where pupils and students pay nothing, wear free uniforms, eat three meals a day, free and are supplied books provided by government.

Such freebies exist only in countries known as “utopia”.

Coups

We hate coups but we will not fight against coup makers only for our democratically ensconced Members of Parliament (MPs) and executive appointees to abuse their office and impoverish the economy to the tune of US$3 billion a year through corruption, and their unending excessive demands, especially of MPs.

The economy is being bled pale. The centre is not holding. Everybody is hitting the streets – even NABCO beneficiaries!

Word is that they have not been paid for five months. Also said to be beating the war drums are the Youth in Afforestation who also, I am told, have not been paid for four months; the Ghana Chamber of Construction Industry (GhCCI) claims government is indebted to contractors to the tune of GH¢1.8 billion; caterers who cook for the School Feeding Programme have not been paid for many months.

Why?

The writer is the Executive Director,

Centre  for Communication and Culture,

E-mail: ashonenimil@gmail.com