Unemployment contributes to indiscipline-Dan Lartey

Dan Lartey, leader of the Great Consolidated Popular Party (GCPP) on Tuesday attributed the spate of indiscipline in the country to mass unemployment and poverty and said "the current campaign against indiscipline would fail if pragmatic measures were not taken to address those concerns.

He said the country's fragile economy corrupt culture and lawless society had direct link with unemployment and the poverty situation in the country and called for swift attention to make the campaign against indiscipline achieve the desired results. "Corruption must be vigorously fought against to change the lives and attitudes of government officials as a first step of stamping out indiscipline in Ghana", he told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Accra on Tuesday.

"Corruption is high, the economy is in shambles, our culture is in jeopardy, no order in the society and indiscipline is rife. All these put together brings confusion in the country," he emphasized.

He said "unemployment generates idleness and if it is that the devil finds work for the idle hand then one can discern what will be the behaviour of a person who did not know where his next meal will come from. Again poverty leads to despondency with its attendant frustrations and it is wondered how a man in that state could cherish discipline.

"Corruption destroys objectivity and blinds man to do the right thing and thus one could be sure of a kind of society we have in the face of unemployment, poverty and corruption"

He said from the foregone conclusion if indiscipline, which has eaten into the fabric of the Ghanaian society was not fought against and eliminated through the current crusade against wrongdoing was bound to fail.

He said the situation in the country made it very difficult for some Ghanaians to adjust their lives doing things decently thereby resorting to armed robbery and other social vices to survive adding, "society can not thrive on roguery and the survival of the fittest syndrome."

Lartey said the "inability of governments to domesticate the country's natural resources compelled the rural folk to migrate to the cities; a situation that was creating productive vacuum in the rural areas and thereby leading to depopulate and disintegrate towns and villages."

He called on all political leaders to join hands in the fight against poverty, corruption, unemployment, to make Ghana a home of peace and prosperity.