OH…..MR. PRESIDENT…

Good morning, Mr. President. I am a young civil servant working as a nurse in one of Ghana’s flagship hospitals (ridge). I worked for a year now, but I have been put on student allowance all this while. Because of that, Mr. President, I cannot pay for my 2 years advance rent, as it’s been the bane of house owners in recent times.

I have to trek from Dodowa, where I stay with a friend, to Accra everyday with the meager stipend I take as allowance. I spend my monthly GH?350.00 solely on transport and feeding, not even left over for clothes and for contingency. A dedicated and committed worker who has earned more plaudits for being hardworking and goes home with bated breath.

Mr. President, if things were not hard, I wouldn’t have bothered to join in the maelstrom of complains you have received so far, because I think you‘ve had enough already. We know everything is being done to turn the dwindling nature of our economy around, Mr. President, but we are dying, it’s not easy ooh, unless you come out of the flagstaff house and sit in “trotro” or buy kenkey without fish, you won’t really be amazed by the turn of events.

Just 3 months ago, Mr.President, I bought close-up tooth paste for 2ghc, only to go there last week and I was asked to pay 3.50ps.To be way sure that I wasn’t dealing with swindlers, I tried two different places at different locations, and I must tell you, Mr. President, it was statutory fixed-3.50ps My usual two balls of kenkey which cost me 50 pesewas each, has amazingly flown to 70 pesewas, even with a further reduction in size. So I have to box in 3 to equal the same quantity I took barely 3months ago.

Mr. President, times indeed are hard. And also Mr. President, the same quantity of bread which was 3ghc is now 5ghc just a short span of 3 months. Infact, Mr. President, things have reverted from grace to grass and now from grass to gravel.

I can no longer buy pure water bag as I often did, it’s too expensive and luxurious to me now, as I have resorted to drinking pipe-borne water, which was a common practice some 10years ago. I am always incomplete penury and have to hang onto friends and sympathizers when the month is 23, 24, and 25……approaching payday- 30th, despite my cost-cutting stratagem.

Mr. President, I believe you to be a good man and not as “brusque” as our erstwhile junta leader. But, Mr. President, if you could adopt elements of our boom spoken former President, it will do as a lot of good. I have realized Ghanaians no longer need the rosy sweet talk and tantalizing persuasive speeches. They need the erstwhile junta style leadership; revisiting the days of the “kalabule” street stripping and whipping, the days we are decreed not to hoard goods and increase prices at whim, the days when the canker of corruption was deemed sacrilegious, and the days when cabinet ministers and presidential staffers labour and feel the heat of the mundane.

And gone were those wonderful days also, Mr. President, when my dad will wake us up in the twilight of the mornings to clean the surroundings before the “SAMA SAMA” people comes to take him-on .Those were the glorious moments discipline was at its acme, the days when the national flag was hoisted high to usher us into the real business of discipline and industry.

To buttress my point, Mr.President,in the wake of our economic woes, individuals ;swindlers, con men, crooks, bandits, burglars, brigands, thugs, cheaters and all those under that umbrella are thievishly charging excessively on goods and services, printing the picture bleaker for our government and our future with floating voters.

So the ordinary Ghanaian is feeling the pressure of loss of monitory value due to the escalated prices charged illegally by these individuals and not from the common market pricing of these goods and service. A team should be tasked to search and arrest these perpetrators without compromise. Do your checks very well Mr. President, this is very important.

I now vouch Ex-President Rawlings stands in espousing the need for Ghanaians to acquire some form of militarization, which I think is synonymous to discipline. Mr. President, as am right here in the first top left stands of the National Independence Square ,awaiting my last night shift for the week whilst putting to you this frenetic long mobile voice mail, because I understand perfectly well you are having a crunch cabinet meeting right away and so can’t pick my call. I can see a lot of young motley men struggling across the tarmac -looking space, because they can’t find anywhere to fix themselves.

And besides me (counting 6 seats to my left) is this young gentleman, well-dressed, black bow-tied on a white sleeves and ochre colored pair of trousers to match, on a phone call in what seem a job hunt……….i am eavesdropping…………Oh no…….., his countenances………. D…i.s..a.p.p.roving , his face……… oh goodness, he wants to cry. I couldn’t just help that, but shed a tear too. I realized he came to the sea shore to rethink and brace the stormy times yet to come. After all, how many people have seen him cry, no one, excluding me in his oblivion? And anybody who thinks a man doesn’t cry, that person better ask again. These are many of the difficulties Ghanaian youth face in search of jobs in recent times, one disappointment after the other. No wonder my poor Dad, instead of the University, took me to Nursing Training College, where I won’t have to struggle with the multitudes. It was well calculated as I have a job readymade from school, but was it worth it?

Down at my far right is seated a young man also in his early 20s preferring a touch of the sun’s heat to keep slumber at hairsbreadth to the shady area where I am seated, since he is carefully racking his brains on a book about the size of the latest encyclopedia. Trying every possible means to grasp the innards of every phrase without faltering, so he could justify his inclusion on the day of reckoning. This is a young man who has chosen the path of formal education, like yours truly, but doesn’t know the tumultuous times ahead even upon passing with distinction. Methinks my bow-tied friend would proffer a sound advice to this guy upon the asking?

And at the hospitals, many cannot settle even the price of a folder how more to talk about surgeries. They don’t have money to settle for simple procedures such as debridement and I&D, with the drugs increasingly being scrapped from the NHIS.

Mr. President, times are very hard. Mr. President, I advise, you should have a committed, corrupt-free confidante attaché in every department, ministry and unit who reports directly to you and at the same time play the espionage. You will be amazed by the results contrary to what your chief scribes tell you.

Even Mr. President, those of us who claim we are working for close to a year and half have virtually nothing to show for it, only pleasantries, plaudits and name calling. How much more those who do not work or are idling? The painful thing is that you are working and you can’t support your immediate sibling who is going to school. Because the money you receive won’t guarantee you a 20 days lapse.

The last time I sent money home, Mr. President, in one of the remotest villages in the north; saboro-Navrongo. I went on involuntary hunger strike having to subsist on monotonous foods which I monikered my (6 days MASH KEY WONDER); I depended on mashed kenkey for 6 days unabated. I never tried that ever since.

Mr. President, things are indeed hard. In the light of the ever increasing fuel prices, Mr. President, I no longer freely move from Dodowa to Ridge, where I work, considering the ever yawning cost by way of transportation. I have to seek refuge in some of the empty wards or nurses’ changes room, and go home when my off days are due. These are part of my own “home-grown” measures oooh and I am quick at it. Mr. President…laai laai things have taught me things.

This is the biggest economic urgency our country has ever faced in our generation and we hope the interventionist measures espoused by the bank of Ghana and the ministry of finance has commensurate positive outcomes to curb the trend of this thunder strike posing a curse on our economy. Inasmuch as I think the problem is not too far from solvency, I would not jab or reprimand you or do any of the nasty things the media people are interested in, just to sully your name and score political points for their party.

I still know you are a very responsible president. It irks you as much as the common man is suffering. I know times are hard for you yourself, and as I hear you are having sleepless nights or thinking about quitting the job sometime ago, tell in volumes that you are not the pokerfaced type. I think you are the gentleman for the job and you are flying us straight out of the brinks of this economic meltdown acquired by heirloom from the global economic depression.

But, Mr. President, unless you walk from Ridge junction to Madina, not for the fond of it, but because the “T&T” left on you can ONLY take you to Dodowa from Madina, or argue with the drivers mate unconvincingly because you can’t add up just 5pses to take you home, or move to controller back and forth hoping for your full salary, or been called names; thrifty and miser for not being able to support a friend in need( after working for close to two years), Or eating “mash key” continuously for 6 days, Or been asked to donate something at church; considering your new-found status as employee of government, or resort to eating heavy/bunch meals as a form of cutting-cost, Or eating soaked gari +sugar because the money left on you can only fare you to workside the next day, or being sick and can’t even settle your own medical bills, Or, better still, if your heart ever throbs and gives you symptoms of an epileptic seizure at the mention of fuel hikes.

Mr. President, you will never know how life can be utterly disgusting and embarrassing at the same time when you are damn “broke”. I have kept with all this in the foregoing because I couldn’t be less thrifty and miserly giving my situation. I have sought involuntary asylum in Accra because I can’t fathom expending 40% of my “allawa” just on transportation to my hometown not even quantifying the impulse expenses there. So for the past year, I have been postponing my visits to the land of my birth, which hitherto wasn’t so. Till I get a substantial amount, I can’t travel there any longer.

Mr. President, these are things I would not have otherwise discussed with a friend ooh. Times are indeed hard. And in the wake of all these woes that I have mentioned in the preceding, Mr. President ,the only incentive that still keeps me going, the only motivation that i still call my profession a passion and the only hope that gives me the tune, that there is light at the end of the tunnel has been revoked. And my name, among other names, has been summarily expunged from the government’s pay roll. After working for these months, Mr. President, am I still a “GHOST” to government?

Please, Mr. President, is it part of the bailout conditionalities or the “home-grown” measures of sifting down the wage bill? Which is which? And I hear anybody who cannot resist the temptation given the hardships one will face per this decision, and subsequently bowing out from service will do government a lot of good considering the amount in arrears they have to pay.

Mr. President, how do I add up to pay my electricity? How do I pay my “T&T” from Dodowa to Ridge? And how long will I do the wishful thinking of keep hoping? How do I feed? These are the basic circuitous life needs in Accra and elsewhere- strictly without fantasies. And I seem to be stripped-off of all these privileges. Mr. President, the big question is how do I SURVIVE whiles working? And I am cocksure, there are still vestiges of the good -manliness in you that warmed the hearts of many a people to vote for you in the last general elections, including my very self (your arch soldier). And that the precarious economic situation hasn’t turned the tables or rid you off the humanity we all know abound in.

Mr. President, we know you don’t have the wherewithal to pay us considering that government is now “broke”. And the process of migrating one onto the SSPP is a nine days’ wonder as it’s laced with the usual public sector bureaucracy.

Why don’t you ORDER the Ministry of Health and the Ghana Health Service to order the hospitals pay us a monthly stipend from the hospitals internally generated funds to complement the allowance, so, when we are enrolled completely on the SSPP, then the outstanding amount will be deducted thereupon? This will ease the burden we are facing currently.

Even preceding all these, Mr. President, a memorandum should have been sent round during our orientation to begin work, that, at least, our allowances will be stopped in 10 months' time or 14 months’ time. As the popular maxim goes “to forewarn is to forearm”. So we could as well plan for this contingency of a kind.

The parody is that, Mr. President, for salary workers who have been on the payroll for years will always continue to agitate for increase in wages, their desire to have their conditions of service bettered will be perpetual, but for young and up-coming ones who cannot even get to feed and whose verve sake, the bulk load of the job is left under, to rather suffer pay expunges, mmmmmmh……, Mr. President, are you sure you are not insulated from REALITY?

Before God and man, Mr. President, as I am speaking to you through your voice mail right now, the only money left on me is GH?4.70ps and I am in complete disarray not knowing the next available option.

God knows I have fought a good fight, I have struggled and survived already……but not in the coming months, I have kept up a good pace, I have contributed to the building of my nation as a true patriot; suffering needle pricks in my line of work, attending to emergencies and saving lives, having to take care of over 40 patients with special needs all alone.

And if the road is way too bumpy for me, Mr.President,as I have nothing to live on, I will in the next week or two travel back to my hometown to help my poor Dad-a retired Agricultural Extension Officer on his 4 acre rice farm. I prefer that, to continue been a liability to my friend whose debt I can’t even pay. I can’t continue the shame of borrowing from him every week in the months yet to unfold. My survival in Accra will remain a mirage if I don’t take my decision now. My decision to work again, Mr. President, solely rest on you 100%. This is just my story, Mr. President; perhaps, there are worse ones you haven’t heard yet. Times are hard, MR. President, times are VERY VERIII hard!! Hello ………ooh, you just picked…..hello are you there Mr. President…..Hellooooooooo…………….Mr. President, can you hear me?

Carl Achana Atiyire (carlatiyire@yahoo.com)
Staff Nurse
Ridge Regional Hospital
Accra