Are we really getting our priorities right as a nation or our leaders are simply not up to the tasks they sweet-talked us into leaving under their care?
I recall vividly the first policy initiative of the late professor of blessed memory is to deliver a clean Ghana within the first hundred days after his swearing in! A few meters down the lane and the current vice president of the same party is moving from one market to the other claiming to be supervising a project that will clean the whole capital within hundred days.
What have come of the first policies of the then government upon which some people gave them their mandate? The survival of the individuals in the metropolis is now being determined by the ‘strongman’ called cholera who is sweeping individuals into their graves like fowls.
Our hospital beds are now shared in two’s and three’s because of the quantum of people who still troop our hospitals daily to be treated of common cholera. The situation is that bad!, even to the extent where the outpatient departments in some of the hospitals and clinics in the city are now turned into wards simply due to our carelessness which has resulted into the outbreak of the deadly diseases.
My eyes were clothed with tears when I saw drips being putted on people sitting in plastic chair at the Madina Polyclinic!! This is how low we’ve come as a nation. If common cholera is breaking the very foundation upon which our nation rest then how far can we fair if the ‘almighty’ Ebola arrives! (God forbid)
I colorfully remember and can still feel the joy with which my sister entered the house one faithful Monday in 2009 when she gained admission to study Public health and Sanitation at the Ho school of Hygiene. With that kind of joy and passion in her, she struggled despite all odds to graduate with first class honor in 2011 ready and more than willing to help improve the sanitation situation that have become an albatross on the neck of our nation.
But virtually three years after her graduation, she together with about three badges of the School of Hygiene who are mandated to keep our cities clean are still wallowing in their various homes awaiting the so called posting and not even sure whether it will come today or somewhere in 2017 due to the policy of government to freeze employment till the end of 2016 whiles our people are dying of cholera without anyone to check the sanitation situation that have resulted in this albatross.
Are we really getting our priorities right or maybe the government just want all his citizens to die of cholera before understanding that good hygiene is of almost importance to the existence of the very people over which they are governing and the professionals who are trained and mandated to keep it cannot be left out in that campaign!
The London school of hygiene is one of the most respected institutions in that country if not the whole world due to how high they priced their clean environment but ours is the direct opposite since graduates of similar institutions back here are wasting on our streets not sure where their next meal is going to come from.
The earlier we sit-up and start prioritizing what is of outmost importance to us, the better furnish we will be to tackle the things unseen. Now that I’m back to campus, I’m even afraid to buy any food just because of the fear of the infection of the deadly diseases.
SOMEWAY SOMEHOW WE MUST MAKE OUR COUNTRY WORK AGAIN!
Bansah Israel Boafo
ibbansah@st.ug.edu.gh.
