E. K. Kumi
19 December 2008
opinion
The indiscipline in the general Ghanaian society is rather widespread and is manifested in the media and civil society by all kinds of disregard for law and order and tolerance of mediocrity and disrespect for authority. This is compounded by the inability and/or unwillingness of the appropriate authorities to ensure and enforce proper behavior.
In the case of the media, the liberalization of the airwaves and media landscape has been misconstrued by some as license for "anything goes". This is depicted by wild and unsubstantiated allegations in the media against individuals, political opponents, industrial and business rivals etc. In this era of heightened political activity, hardly a day passes without screaming headlines accusing, deriding or denigrating some political party or opponent. In most of such cases, the accusations are simply unfounded and scandalous. If all of such cases were to end up at the courts, many a media man would end up incarcerated! On the other hand, there are many genuine public concerns which are not being dealt with in the media mainly because that would not readily sell or would require thorough, in depth investigation and good work. For example, our towns and cities are not being planned or laid out properly for sometime now.
POLITICAL WILL
This is mainly due to lack of appropriate action by the city and town planning and implementing authorities and corruption and indiscipline by the implementing agencies. For example, in the old part of Sunyani town, the colonial authorities left behind a well planned town with buildings neatly laid out in lines. However in recent times with our own supposedly trained planners, buildings and extensions have been allowed to virtually destroy the beautiful colonial layout. The same can be said of most parts of our new townships, Indeed, I daresay that one of the reasons why Ghana has not been doing so well in inter-national sporting events is partly due to the fact that in most of our towns, there are fewer and fewer open spaces for children to play and train on since almost all planned and/or available open spaces have been given out or taken over by buildings. It is such cases of abuse that the media should investigate and bring up to the public domain.
There have been several instances in the past where the media has reported cases of breach of public order, mob action or group hooliganism during which some people have been arrested, as in the case of Ashanti Mampong youth rampage of ECG premises and destroying property some years ago. The final outcome and what was done to the culprits were never given much prominence. Such cases tend to encourage repeat of such incidents, since some people are tempted to believe that the culprits were left off the hook. The media should always follow such incidents to their logical conclusion and report on them. One of the things the media could also do to instill greater discipline in societal behavior is to undertake more thorough investigative journalism in cases of breach of social norms by identifying the particular individuals responsible and publishing his/her name and identity in the media. In that case, if a group of military recruits, for example, go out to misbehave as happened at Takoradi Poly sometime ago, or the soldiers at 37 hospital who forced drivers to carry dead bodies. The names, pictures, ranks and identity numbers of all those involved should be published in the papers, instead of just blaming the military in general. I daresay such a report would be a greater disincentive to group indiscipline than any conventional punishment.
INDISCIPLINE IN THE PUBLIC AND CIVIL SERVICE
Indiscipline in the civil sector of our society is manifested in undue delays in executing assignments, demanding or creating situations which demand giving out money for normal tasks for which one is employed and paid, (i.e. the "go-and-come" syndrome) aiding and abetting stakeholders to cheat the system, taking undue advantage of the system for their personal benefit and outright conflict-of-interest situations.
In the education sector for example, some teachers all along the ladder from kindergarten to the universities are now using extraordinary means such as extra classes, lecture notes and pamphlets unfairly to make money for themselves. Some teachers actually refuse to address the syllabuses during normal school time so that they make unfair money from it in extra classes. I have even heard that passing of some internal exams depend on what one pays to the teacher/lecturer. The way to deal with such cases is to launch a media war by which culprits are exposed in the media in proven cases and then prosecuted. Also, remuneration, rewards and promotions would be made dependent on output and results. Thus, the percentage of school children or students passing major or external exams in an institution would determine the salary increase, promotion or other benefits such as free accommodation in that institution the following year, for the major players in the institution. To implement this successfully, teachers would be posted at a station long enough to be responsible tor the results before transfer is considered.
CORRUPTION
In the civil and public service, the petty corruption and indiscipline by which clients are frustrated by delays may be minimized by instituting "maximum delay time penalties". By this method, the maximum length of time for providing a particular service such as obtaining a building permit or getting connected to water or electricity from the date of submission of the appropriate application should be determined and published. If an applicant does not get satisfactory services after the stipulated time and no reasonable written explanation is given him earlier, the specified officer in charge should be severely penalized, say by the court.
The passing on of the efficiencies and low productivity of the public sector organizations - ECG, Water company, Telephone companies, Transport companies etc - etc. to consumers and clients by charging higher tariffs and rates not commensurate with service delivery should be stopped. This can be done by ensuring that higher tariffs precede improved services and not allowed to come after. So, for electricity tariffs to be increased by any percentage, a specific consuming area should be demarcated. The service should then be monitored to have improved certified by consumers for say 3 months at least. Then the increase could be granted. When this works, it could then be extended to other areas. This way, the situation we find ourselves in by which we pay higher tariffs for poorer services as has happened with the recent increase in ECG tariffs would stop! In this regard therefore the recent increase in TV license from 50Gp to G¢50 i.e. 1000% should not apply to such areas like the northern part of the Volta Region where transmission hours do not correspond to the rest of the country and where at times there is poor or no transmission for days on end. New tariffs would then only be implemented when there is at least 3 months of uninterrupted good service delivery.
PROGRAMMES
Furthermore GTV would have to overhaul its programs and broadcast more interesting and worthwhile programs as was in the 1990s rather than devoting most of their airtime for adverts for which they make money and we are being expected to pay for watching mostly adverts!
This widespread indiscipline in our social life has permeated even our religious bodies some of which are now more concerned with making money out of their followers than leading them to God. Most churches have devised very ingenious ways of literally fleecing their members without corresponding improvement in services rendered. It is suggested that the way churches announce collections received they should also be made to announce the disbursement of the amounts collected every week.
In conclusion, the next president of our republic, if he is to make a difference and offer us a better life, would have to seriously take it upon himself to address the issue of general indiscipline in our society in all its aspects as enumerated in the above articles and write-ups. To be continued
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