My journey through Graphic 12

I thought, however, that it was very demeaning to think that of me – or is it because I am black?

Or journalists cannot afford to travel twice in a month to Europe. Really?

Perhaps I was making a fuss over nothing, but the episode reminded me of a similar experience I had in Frankfurt, Germany, when I was travelling to Berlin for the first time.

Then, the issue was to do with a stamp in my passport which showed that I had ever visited Germany, while there was no visa to show that I had legally travelled to the country.

We will talk about this at another time but travel and see, the sages say.

Hmm! There seems to be one trouble or the other anytime one travels. It doesn’t look like it will stop anytime soon due to people’s perceptions, actions and prejudices.

Nonetheless, it is not because of such occurrences that when the opportunity to travel knocks the door will not be opened. We soldier on!

Good from bad

Indeed, if I derived any good thing from that tag, it was the fact that it got to me so much so that I decided to pen something down about my experience.\

It was 7:39 a.m. European Time on a not-too-exciting day in April 2014, and I didn’t know how to describe how I felt at that moment – Should I be angry or happy? I asked myself.

Well, I guess a mixture of the two, since I was finally leaving for home after about a week’s sojourn in Europe on official duty.

As a matter of fact, I wrote the piece tens of thousands of miles above sea level, onboard Turkish flight TK 1942 from Brussels to Istanbul, where I would connect a flight to Accra.

Well, I reasoned that one was bound to have some experiences when he or she travelled -  some exciting, some challenging, some sad and others dangerous.

It is one’s ability to navigate all these sweet and sour moments and still embark on a successful journey from and back home that qualifies him or her as a been-to, if you ask me.

By God’s grace I arrived safely home after my mixture of experiences and I was very thankful that I had got home safe and sound.

Wahala in waiting

Home and dry, but there were more troubles, what I will call wahala, waiting for me.

There are some experiences that one is bound not to forget because of the impact they come with or leave, and one of them started simmering in my line of work when all I did was follow my instincts as a reporter and go for the news.

Earlier in February in 2014 before my double visit to Denmark and the episodes I have already recounted, I was assigned to a media launch programme that only had editors invited.

My Deputy News Editor then, Albert Salia, asked me to stand in for him because he was tied up with some other responsibilities, and I believe because he believed that I could cover the programme adequately in view of my background.

So it was, that I dutifully covered the said assignment which had to do with a new thing that was going to benefit Ghanaians – the introduction of a flexible prepaid system by the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG), in partnership with a private company.

The story authored by me, which was published on February 6, 2014, read: “The day is coming, when members of the public would be able to buy units from vendors for their electricity meters as they currently do for their mobile phones.”

“Consumers of electricity would also be able to purchase electricity online if they are far away from home, or buy from handheld devices operated by accredited agents at public places.”

“Not only that, electricity consumers would also be able to recharge their power at home or establishment through an SMS Server, by way of text messages from their phones wherever there is a telecommunication service,” among other benefits that consumers stood to enjoy, once the project kicked off.

These were disclosed at the meeting with selected media in Accra, by the Head, IT and Projects, of the private company partnering the ECG, Ghana Electrometer Company, Duke Nelson, who also intimated then that the new billing method would become possible after the successful completion of a pre-pilot project involving a newly introduced electricity prepaid meter known as the SMART-G Prepayment System.

The pre-pilot project was then ongoing at Danyame, a suburb in Kumasi, in partnership with the ECG, having begun on October 4, 2013 and was expected to move to the actual pilot stage in April, 2014.

Infamous write-up

After filing my news story on the soon-to-be introduced convenient system, I realised that I had so much information that would also be worth the read and so I decided to do a feature on the new phase of electricity billing in the country and the role that an indigenous company, Ghana Electrometer Company, was playing to give Ghanaians a respite in the payment of their electricity bills, a vexed issue even now.

I thus invited one of the officers of the company who was also at the meeting, then the Operations and Internal Relations Manager of Ghana Electrometer Company, Obed Solomon, for an interview to shed more light on the new system.