Ghana Is Under Tutelage Of Blind Leadership

Ghana is like a drum with a blind drummer. Instead of the drummer hitting the head of the drum to make good music, the blind drummer is hitting the sides of the drum making unintelligible noises.

Ghana is like a patient on a hospital operating table needing brain surgery with a blind surgeon. Instead of the brain surgery patient Ghana needs, the blind surgeon is clipping the hairs on patient Ghana head instead.

Ghana is like an Airplane with a blind pilot. Instead of the Pilot throttling the plane for ascending to higher heights, the blind pilot hit the knob for descending and plunged the plane to the ocean killing everybody on board.

Folks, the three scenerios above might sound like a fiction but in reality, Ghana at the moment is exactly like that. We have a government without the cojones or is pusillanimous hard decisions needed to be made to arrest the deterriorating economic harsdships on the people has resorted to half measures and propaganda nonsense to adumbrate the harsh reality of the situation in Ghana.

President Mahama's recent voluntary reduction of his pay by ten percent(10%) and asking other Government officials to do the same is what I enumerated in the first three paragraphs of this article; a propaganda nonsense that does not address the problem we have.

This government is too fat that needs to go on a diet but these fatsos are not ready to embark on weight reduction regiment. The constant increase in taxes and tariffs will not halt the budget deficit or reduce National deficit. The Right Reverend Professor Emmanuel Martey, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana got it right when he said; "Imposition of taxes is not the answer"

"The Right Reverend Professor Emmanuel Martey, Moderator of the Presbyterian Church of Ghana, has urged the government to cut down on waste, fight graft and find a more efficient way of doing things to turn the economy around.He said the imposition of taxes was not the solution to the prevailing economic challenges, and warned that this could only worsen the plight of the people."

This is a bad policy that is destroying the business base of the country as many businesses continue to lay off workers or shut down completely due to over taxation. What the government needs to do is to reduce expenses on the other side of the balance sheet to balance the budget and this reduction can be made in three areas.

1.The government employees of 700,000 should be reduced drastically to about 250,000. There is a government employee per 30 Ghanaians compared to USA where there is a government employee per 300 USA citizens. What the government should do is to privatize some agencies and end let remove their salaries from government payrolls because most of these government employees are dead weight sucking tax payers money without corresponding production to justify their wages. Eg, we used to have 6500 Ghana Telecom Employees and this company was losing 200 million dollars every year. Can you imagine if this company is still under the government with another 200 million dollars expenses at the moment? Does it even make sense for we to have 680 Employees at the Office of the Presidency and still adding more?

2.We should also discontinue this colonial mentality of providing housing for every government appointee including Ministers. The only People who should have free housing should be the President and his Vice. The rest including all Parliamentarians should find their own houses and pay for their living like the rest of the population. Apart from free health Insurance, an official car and allowance for petrol, all other benefits should be cut. It recently came out that, the Mayor of Accra is living in a GHc850,000 mansion and two of the City council members also were living in houses costing GHC780,000 and GHc750,000 respectively. Government should not be providing high cost housing for high earning employees free of charge but should be building low cost houses for Teachers, Nurses and other civil servants to buy on mortgage payments.

3. The most useless arm of government in Ghana is the legislature. It is the most unproductive of the three branches of government and the most expensive. The majority Party rubber stamps every government proposition whether good or bad and the Minority Party oppose every government initiative regardless of its usefulness. Despite their hefty salaries, the 275 members also receive $50,000 soft loan every four years to buy a car, another $50,000 every four years as bonus and somebody like Alba Bagbin has collected this $50,000 every four years since 1992 and due to collect anotherone in 2016. That will be $300,000 for just one legislature.

It is time government seriously tackle the problems we are facing with courage and stop propaganding to the illiterate masses.

Justice Sarpong

CARDINAL of TRUTH)