Business News of 2013-03-05

Journalists express frustration at gov’t officials

A number of journalists who were assigned to cover the launch of a World Bank programme in Accra yesterday took issue with officials of the bank, the Ghana Highway Authority (GHA) and the ministries of Finance and Economic Planning and Local Government and Rural Development for always paying lip service to life-threatening issues.
The programme, which took place at the World Bank Office, was to facilitate the use of public-private partnership, especially to design, finance and build foot bridges on the basis of built, operate and transfer (BOT) on some of the major roads such as the George Walker Bush Highway and on rivers that have claimed lives.
According to the journalists, it was unacceptable to have government officials and engineers who were paid with state funds look unconcerned while roads were built in densely populated areas without providing footbridges, leading to the death of pedestrians.
The argument of the journalists centred on the fact that Ghanaian state officials had failed to pragmatically find solutions to the myriad of problems confronting the people and always resorted to roundtable conferences, workshops and the launch of new projects accompanied by huge media publicity.
Not even an intervention by the acting World Bank Country Director, Dr Dante Mossi, that the media should publicise the new programme could placate the journalists, who believed that the modus operandi of officials should move from “talk shop” to concrete actions.
Under the World Bank programme, which will be run on a pilot basis before being replicated in other parts of the country, private companies would bid and build footbridges on some highways and rivers and generate revenue through advertisements that would be placed on the bridges until the companies recoup their investment.
A document distributed by the World Bank which expatiated on the programme gave some startling statistics of the number of people who had been maimed and killed on the nation’s highways.
In 2011, for instance, 2,448 pedestrians were involved in accidents, out of which 898 died and 1,357 got injured.. “Of those 898 deaths, 606 occurred because people were attempting to cross the roads. As a comparison, in 2012, the number of deaths resulting from people attempting to cross roads was 491, while as many as 1,891 pedestrians were injured,” it said.
According to the document, evidence from the statistics was that as the country developed, its road infrastructure, the volume and speed of traffic made life more difficult for the pedestrian.
The criticism of the officials started immediately after engineers from the GHA had introduced the programme and explained that it was part of moves to get private companies to build footbridges on some highways in the Greater Accra and Central regions.
When the opportunity was given for journalists to ask questions, Mr Bashiru Adam of The Business and Financial Times told the gathering that Ghanaian media practitioners were tired telling people that the government had put in place measures to address some problems or it had come up with a new policy, among others.
According to him, more often than not such programmes or policies ended after they had been launched or after initial implementation. He wondered why Ghanaian officials and engineers constructed roads, especially highways, first and allowed many people to lose their lives crossing those roads before considering the construction of footbridges.
For his part, this reporter did not mince words when he told the officials that deaths through accidents on highways in the country could not wait for a public-private partnership.
He added that public and government officials were always in a rush to clear people from the roadsides but the same officials became toothless and in some cases encouraged people to sell on pavements when elections were around the corner.
In his bid to calm nerves, an official of the GHA showed to the gathering the government policy on public-private partnership but a reporter from Metro TV, Mr Frank Worlanyo, noted that Ghana had many fine ideas, including rules and regulations, which were gathering dust.
He said from water to electricity supply, the ordinary Ghanaian was being made to bear the brunt because officials and engineers who were paid huge salaries and rode in cross-country vehicles were not innovative enough to solve those age-old problems.