Self-made 'wahala' is killing Ghana!

Fine Monday morning.

I get up with my head full of nice ideas to share with readers of my column.

I am particularly pleased with one story, which I think will amuse my readers greatly. It's got sex in it, and loads of laughter. I like it because it will take me away from the serious issues I have often written about.

Such articles can wrongly depict one as some sort of “preacher.” I hate that notion, although, of course, if I can write something that might make life better or easier for my fellow countrymen and women, it would be remiss of me not to do so.

Ha, I am no sooner at my desk, filled with the laughter I so badly want to share, when I hear a knock.

I open the door to find three men.

“We are from the Ghana Water Company,” they say. “We have come to disconnect your water supply, for non-payment of your bill.”

“But I have paid for it! I did so last week as soon as I got it!”

“Ah, then please show us the receipt!”

“Receipt? It was paid for me by my house help. I don't remember her giving me any receipts. Even if she did so, I have so many pieces of paper strewn all over my office that I doubt whether I can find it quickly!”

“Well, if you don't show us a receipt, then we will have to disconnect you. It's the only evidence that can prove that you have settled your bill.”

“But what about your databank?” I asked. “You are holding a list of names showing those who haven't paid. What about those who HAVE paid?”

They looked at one another. This guy must be off his rocker, I could hear their minds saying. What do we need a list of payees for? We are only interested in non-payees!

But I pressed my case: “If I paid, and was given a receipt, then what I paid should go into your databank and be reflected on any list you generate regarding payees and non-payees?”

They were astounded that I was repeating my “mantra” about their databank. They insisted: “The only evidence you can show us to indicate that you have paid is an official receipt.”

I said, “I've told you, I didn't go to make the payment myself. And when the people who went to make the payment came back to say they had made the payment, I was so preoccupied with whatever I was doing that I must have waved them towards some table and gone on with my work. Ideally, I should have later retrieved it for safe-keeping. But I no longer remember to do ALL such things. So, I have no receipt to show you!”

“Ok! Then we shall disconnect you!”

“No, you can't disconnect me because I have paid my bill.”

“Show us the evidence....blah! Blah! Blah!”

It seemed like we had arrived at one of those confrontations between an unmovable object and an irresistible force!

Fortunately, my house help now arrived on the scene. She swore that she had gone and made the payment. Then she started to look for the receipt – among about two million papers!

She gave up and called the driver. This guy arrived on the scene in double-quick time, thank God. He too swore that they had made the payment and been given a receipt for it.

I asked the guys, "Don't you think that the balance of probabilities works in favour of our having paid the bill? The house-help affirms that we did. She told you that before the driver came. And he has confirmed what she had said earlier. Do you know that if we were in court and two people independently corroborated the evidence of each other, the judge would set some store by that unsolicited corroboration?”

The guys looked at me as if to say, “Do you think we live by the law?”

Anyway, the driver didn't waste time but began to dig into the papers strewn all over my place. Without a word, he pulled one out! He gave it to the Water Company guys.

They each looked at it. It was the official receipt all right!

The Water Company guys reconnected my supply. But I had a few questions to ask them before they left.

If money paid by Water Company customers could be kept by the operators of the authorised pay-points of the Company and not be reflected in the databank of the Company, wasn't it dangerous for the Company? Suppose a pay-point operator decided to go and gamble or play Lotto with the funds it had received on behalf of the Company, how would the Water Company know? And suppose the gamble didn't pay off and the money was lost....? Would the pay-point operator admit to having received the money in the first place?”

They weren't interested in my questions. Then I remembered that I had seen someone allege on TV that there were some “big men” whose company was operating a service on behalf of the Government and had collected enough money that would “make it unnecessary for Ghana to go to the IMF” if that money were paid into government coffers!

The TV guy claimed that the company was keeping that money and not being made to pay it to the Ghana treasury because it is “owned by some “big men”.

If true, just imagine the interest alone that that money must be fetching, in a country where commercial bank lending rates must rank as one of the highest in the world!

I don't have enough information to confirm or deny any speculation of that sort. But certainly, if a Water Company can allow its pay-point operators to hold on to its revenue without being aware that they are doing so, then something is wrong with our system.

Anyway, in a country that has spent so much money to promote “digitization”, why should a nationally-owned utility company be allowed to continue using the paper payment system (which, as we have seen from my case) can cause so much unnecessary “wahala” to customers?

Has digitization brought “windfall, unearned bounties” to some people?