Still shifting - But there is hope in sight

Shifting in 2020 will need courage.

Yes, I will need lots of it to relinquish a house I have lived in for 37 years.

It will mean a clean break with the familiar relationships within a household, built and stretched over the years.

It will include the brutal reality of searching for accommodation, being pitted against agents who want to make it fast, by well-meaning friends wanting to help.

It will be the whole rigmarole of advance payment of rent for at least two years.

Automatically, committing to an accommodation would also mean satisfying the greed of agents by coughing up their fees, which is 10 per cent of the amount charged in rent.

The whole show really, really beats me. What if a tenant dies in the first month of his or her tenancy? Is there any sort of refund to his or her next of kin, spouse, children or any family member?

Perhaps, the extreme advance rents we pay in Ghana are security against the risky behaviour of tenants — flight within a few months of stay, damage to property and the like. However, must it be so exorbitant and out of the reach of most?

The issue about my accommodation reminds me of a slightly different, but related matter.

It is the impasse between the Ghana Union of Traders Association (GUTA) and Nigerian traders at the Tiptoe Lane at the Kwame Nkrumah Circle in Accra.

Early in the new year, there was a news item on exorbitant prices of items as a result of the forced closure of the shops of Nigerian traders there.

An interview with a Ghanaian trader revealed that because the Nigerian traders had been barred from retail trading and their shops locked up by GUTA until the appropriate documents to trade were presented to the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MOTI), no goods were being brought in, so stocks available were exorbitant.

The interviewee trader added that before the closure of the shops of foreigners, the Nigerians brought in goods and sold them moderately to quickly clear all stocks; thus, items were cheap and within budget.

That piece of information was not surprising. Laws aside, I have no sympathies for GUTA. I believe their impasse with the Nigerians is born out of some jealousy for their entrepreneurship and commerce.

You see, a Ghanaian trader would price his or her items beyond the means of most customers and is prepared to sit on or keep stock even if they would rot in the process.

A Nigerian, on the other hand, would bring in items, price them moderately and in a few days, clean out the shop.

In Ghana, although we have the proverb: “adidi daa na eye, nnye adidi preko” (to wit: eating daily is good and not eating once), we hardly practise it.

We would rather charge rents that push public servants into "ways and means" or unorthodox modes of getting money, than charge rents each month.

We would rather die still sitting on goods than price them moderately to clear stocks. Little wonder that corruption is still prevalent.

Some years back, an initiative to regularise accommodation and stop the advance charging of rent was announced. What has happened to that?

GUTA members must also learn from their Nigerian partners and stop the cut-throat pricing of their goods to encourage patronage.

Maybe if they did that, there would be no room for the commerce-conscious foreigners in our retail sector, whose focus is to break even or make some profits, to stay in business for longer.

Unlike Ghanaians, they are in commerce for the long haul, but it seems to me GUTA members and Ghanaian traders in general get into business to make it big one time.

We need a shift of that mentality in this new decade.

Writer's E-mail: caroline.boateng@graphic.com