By: Kwaku A. Danso
(I wrote this on President Mahama's Facebook Wall by completing a form online as the Website requested a “Meeting with us”. This is good for our democracy irrespective of what party you support or vote for. Let us remember Ghana has only one President at one time; I want to share (with few edits). K. Danso, Feb. 18, 2016)
Dear Mr. President,
You are the youngest President to be given the mandate to manage Ghana and hence some of us older ones who saw a little bit of Colonial rule, then the rule of Kwame Nkrumah, and the later governments, have a little bit better expectation of you.
The greatest definition of a nation and a people come from IMAGE. When you visit any home or town or nation nobody tells you how clean and civilized the people are. Sure the economic development of the area also becomes observable based on structures one sees and how clean the place is, as well as items of beauty such as quality of landscaping, shrubbery and flowers.
Mr. President, I visited and lived in my house in East Legon this August to September 2015 and was very disappointed that despite some observable progress such as the completion of Boundary Road on which my house is, and some solar lighting of the street, there was so much filth and dirt on the roads.
It was disgusting more so because the choked gutters are the same ones I had spent over $5,000 to have covered in front of my house only 10 or so years ago. It is simply a shame to have people who have worked hard in life to build such nice homes be forced to live in such filth with open sewage! No! WE CAN DO BETTER! How would tourists and visitors think of us?
Please Mr. President if there is one or two things you can do to leave a legacy and save lives from malaria deaths, it is this:
ISSUE AN EXECUIVE ORDER TO
1. BAN OPEN GUTTERS and Have all TOWNS, DISTRICTS, METRO and REGIONS under your constitutional control now to have a POLICY and PLAN and Design and build ONLY UNDERGROUND SEWAGE systems (let them do the Budget for each town and share the cost among homeowners); and then
2. HAVE EVERY BUILDING NUMBERED and recorded in district and town maps so databases can be easily developed for planning and budgetary purposes;
And last but not the LEAST,
3. ALLOW ALL TOWN, DISTRICT, METRO AND REGIONAL Chief Executives to offer themselves for election at the end of their term and let them be given the mandate of the people. All humans learn to manage themselves as human organizations, and we have enough Western educated people from each town now to learn.
These items alone will bring Ghana under a different kind of real genuine democracy and economic empowerment that will leave a lasting legacy for generations to come.
May God bless the work of your thoughts and mind to help our people of Ghana.
Kwaku A. Danso, PhD
President- Ghana Leadership Union
Moderator- GLU Forum /GLU-GHANA
