I wonder what background Alhaji Amin Suleman has to qualify him to be Roads and Transport Minister. If this man has a background in City Planning or Civil Engineering, he should go back to school. Either way, he has demonstrated clearly that he should not be the Roads and Transport Minister because he has limited knowledge, if any, of what part roads play in civil society. He also does not know what government is. Advocating that each community does what it wants rather than having laws to guide our road construction should never be a Minister's job. With Ministers like this, how can we have good roads in Ghana.
Sticking with roads for now, if communities are raising money to construct their own roads, then the government shouldn't be telling them what standards to use for constructing the roads and so it is easy to imagine that you can see all kinds of standards from community to community. I have seen many, many times accidents confined to specific areas of stretches of roads because of poor design. Poorly designed roads will abound all over Ghana and our Roads and Transport Minister can't seem to envision that.
Besides poor designs, Legon for instance can say all teachers will not have to pay to drive on roads on campus but everyone else will have to. There is nothing that will stand in the way of Legon doing that. If Legon can do that, and if the Minister advocates communities building their own roads and charging for people to drive on them, why can't a group of white people build their own community in Ghana and say their residents can drive on their roads and everyone else will pay some exorbitant amount thereby keeping Ghanaians out of that community. People may think this can't happen, but I have seen reports that there are areas in Angola and elsewhere where the locals can't go to. And we mustn't forget that not too long ago, there was an Italian owned club where black people weren't allowed to go right in the middle of Accra.
On Legon's plan, the President of Ghana (or until recent years his appointee) is the Chancellor of the University for a reason. First off all, this was a hand-me-down from our colonial masters because the Queen of England was the head of all public universities and the head of the school's administration is the Vice Chancellor. This is a model we have maintained, and I believe it is so today. Legon, the last I knew, is a public university, built with public money and we should have unabridged access to it at all times. If Legon is going to go private on us, then they should do so only if they pay us back the value of the land and buildings that we own and completely go without government subsidies. They should also be ready to bear responsibility for all mishaps on the campus if people drive on substandard roads that cause the mishaps.
President Mahama is our elected President. The Minister of Roads and Transportation works for him. Is it President Mahama's policy that communities should build roads on their own or is he a figure head who has abjugated himself from his responsibilities to the country and thus his appointees have stepped in to make policies that sound good to them?
The very sad part of all this is that it confirms my view, and perhaps the view of many Ghanaians, that our elected leaders can't see past their noses. They have no vision whatsoever and they do not attempt to seek ideas from elsewhere. I am not surprised that the President has not said anything about this. I wrote an opinion article that was published on Ghanaweb on Thursday, 31 December 2009 titled "Reflecting on my observations in Ghana". I believe my article has better ideas on how to handle the cost of building and maintaining roads in Ghana that is head and shoulders over what our Minister is suggesting. I suggest that both he and his boss, President Mahama, spend a little time reading it.
My beloved Ghana: leader after leader with no vision for our country. When or when will we wake up from this dream or are we waiting for a nightmare? Nightmare at least wakes you up and spurs you into action.
Tony Pobee-Mensah
