The story also said, “As one of the meter suppliers for the ECG and the MoEP, GEM’s meters have been deployed in about 85 per cent of ECG’s operational areas.
“In an interview with the Daily Graphic, the Operations and Internal Relations Manager of Ghana Electrometer Company, Mr Obed Solomon, said, “Over the period, we have supplied to the ECG and MoEP over 1,300,000 units, which are all functioning satisfactorily in the designated areas of installation; be it prepaid in urban areas or credit meters in SHEP areas.”
These facts, to me, were worth telling, and no one disproved them when the story was published.
After this episode, I decided to put it all behind me and focus on my work.
But I was mistaken.
The matter was to come back and haunt me as I found out much later.
The meter company gave me an invitation to a tour of a manufacturing plant of a partner company in Cairo, Egypt, in August that year, which I gladly accepted and did all that was required of me – informing my bosses, filling a travel form, etc.
My passport was requested, and a visa procured for the trip, which, unknown to me, was not to be.
At that time, it was the MD who had the final say if a journalist had to travel to cover an assignment and not the Editor.
Summoned
So, on a Friday before the trip scheduled for the following Sunday, I got to work as usual and was summoned by the Deputy Editor, Kingsley Kodwo Inkoom, to his office.
He was acting Editor in the absence of the Editor, Ransford Tetteh, who was on leave.
Although I was oblivious of what was in store for me, I still smelt a rat in view of my boss’s demeanour.
As I approached him, he began to calm me down, saying I should not take what he was going to say to me to heart.
What at all was going on, I wondered. I was soon to find out that I had been denied the opportunity to travel and that he had been instructed to tell me I could not embark on the trip.
Indeed, it had been mentioned on the invitation letter that I was unavailable to travel.
Not long afterwards, the leadership of the facilitators of the media tour, Stratcomm Africa, was at the office to inquire what was going on.
I remember being asked if I had done anything untoward or if I had any issues with my MD to be prevented from embarking on the planned tour.
Well, I was at a loss myself, although I guessed it might have something to do with the feature I wrote earlier.
Interestingly, try as they did to get some answers from the MD, they could not reach him, and he was also out of town.
Dejected and disappointed, they had to leave, wondering what they would tell their client, Ghana Electrometer.
It was the 11th hour, too, so they could not get a replacement for me on the trip.
Benin
Before my European and story troubles, however, I had the opportunity to, in the line of work, visit Cotonou in Benin for the first time in February that year.
The occasion was a workshop organised by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), WaterAid West Africa (WAWA) and the West Africa Water and Sanitation Journalists Network (WASH-JN), in collaboration with Benin’s Ministry of Health, and attracted over 30 participants from West and Southern Africa.
Countries represented included Ghana, Liberia, Cote d’Ivoire, Guinea Bissau, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Niger, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Guinea, Benin, Togo, The Gambia, Mali, Cameroon and Malawi.
The workshop aimed to alert the media on their responsibility to hold their governments accountable on the commitments made towards the improvement of water, sanitation and hygiene services, especially in international conventions and at national, regional and international fora.
One of the first things that intrigued me about my Cotonou trip, however, is what I narrate here.
At approximately 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, February 16, 2014, the Air Côte d’Ivoire aircraft, flight HF522, took off at the Kotoka International Airport, bound for Cotonou, Benin.
Being my first time in the Benin capital, I naturally looked forward to arriving in that country just next door, and knew it was going to be a very short flight.
Two hours
Although my ticket indicated we were to spend 50 minutes from Accra to Cotonou, I was not surprised when the captain of the aircraft said flight time was estimated at 35 minutes.
It was because I guessed the other 15 minutes were for any delay in departure and arrival.
Imagine my surprise, therefore, when on arrival and taxing to our allocated space at the Cotonou airport, a member of the cabin crew announced it was 11:23 p.m. Benin time.
What! I whispered to myself.
I passed it off, thinking the lady who made the announcement had made a mistake.
But she actually gave us the right time, as I was to find out later.
To be continued
