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At 3 am on May 28, our water in MD, the main building, was still cut off. My staff went running around because there was a power interruption despite having paid GHC600 on the prepaid meter.
It was diagnosed that the meter software was not communicating (network) with the ECG computers; so, we had an electrician shift the connecting motor that pumps the water to another prepaid meter circuit.
This was taking place all day, and we finally had water running before going to sleep, only to wake up at 3 am and find the water interrupted again! You can't even wash your hands after the last flush of the toilet.
Sure, there is a lot of high-rise development going on in East Legon and other parts of Accra, but for God's sake, is anybody at home, in the office where someone was supposed to plan for the basics like water, electricity, network communication, and especially "sitting down to think and plan"?
Well, I left the country as "a poor boy" on an engineering scholarship to America, and it's been 55 years, and maybe my last attempt to return to Ghana to live. After all, nobody takes big houses to life. It is rumored that in the future, all men will be made equal.
I suggest that even in Accra, Ghana, all men are equal now, as our generators and motors, money, and all efforts become on par as we cannot flush the toilet without pipe-borne water, and here security staff are valued at night on the same level as a wife trying to lift a big jug of water in what is called a "Kufuor gallon."
It is embarrassing to call oneself an engineer in Ghana because I find that the young girls know perhaps five times more about how to load up units, top up, and operate smartphones than all the knowledge some of us had to build the chip in our earlier days! It helps in Ghana to laugh and smile a little, even in cases of extreme stress, as my late auntie called a "kramuna" (meaning criminal) case.
At the end of the day, all some of us can say is that God have mercy on the people of Ghana, and in the words of Kwame Nkrumah when we were growing up, "My countrymen, my people, and my motherland."
