Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Noise Noise everywhere--any help?
By Doreen Hammond
It is 9 a.m. on a Saturday morning. I have just alighted from a trotro and I’m entering the central business area. I just leaped to get across a choked gutter filled to the brim with polythene material and the rotten left-overs of whatever one can think of. My mission? To get the family’s stock of necessities for the week ahead. I am at a marketplace, call it market Y, though in truth it is identical to most of our markets in Accra and other urban centres in the country.
The stench emanating from this market is just unbearable. In addition to the pungent smell is the muddy ground that I and the hundreds of other visitors have to navigate as we go about our business. Clearly, this market was not designed as such from the beginning; it must definitely have been an afterthought, something which just sprang up. Another certainty is that this market has not seen any facelift for as long as it has been called a market.
As I meander my way about, almost choking, I observe our mothers, sisters and wives, some carrying babies of varying ages, sitting by their wares in the stench and muddy ground. Right ahead of me is a waste disposal container that is heavily overburdened with rubbish. Like the market women who have lost any hope of ever operating in a decent environment, the container looked resigned to its fate, not knowing when next it would be relieved of its foul contents.
In front of me is a tax collector busily collecting the daily tolls from the market women and kayayei (female porters), obviously unperturbed by the fact that people operating in such an environment rather need to be paid some compensation! Ideally, they owe nobody even a dime!
Ahead of me is a dilapidated van mounted with a public address system advertising a herbal product interspersed with loud music. Opposite the herbal medicine vendor is a small bus terminal from where another public address system is blurting the destination of vehicles: Korle Bu, Kaanesh- Odorkor, Circle, Suhum- Nsawam , Spintex etc.
Fifty metres ahead is a solo church operating loud speakers bleating out a gospel song, Okramanfunuba. A microphone- wielding soul-searcher with a tattered King James Version of the Holy Book (hemust have been doing this work for quite a long time) tucked under his armpit appeals to passersby to cast their bread upon the waters……
All these are complemented by the shrill voices of market women trying to outdo each other as they attract customers to their wares. Commercial vehicle drivers carrying passengers and foodstuffs to various parts of the city entertain themselves with persistent blowing of their horns, the louder they blew, the better they felt, it seemed, adding to the chaos in the market.
The one-and-half hours spent in the market was like hell as the stench, combined with utmost noise had the potential to make one lose it. Thankfully, I managed to hop unto a bus heading back home. As soon as the bus took off, there popped up, a preacher on wheels who continued to admonish us to seek the face of the Lord and ended up selling a concoction to those who cared. He managed to draw the passengers into what he actually came to do by shouting Amen, Amen! Hallelujah!
The testimonies he gave about the concoction were too good to be true; with such a wonder drug capable of curing every illness under the sun, who needs a doctor? As soon as he got off the bus, the driver turned on his radio, and from under my seat I could hear the vibration of loud sounds from some wooden speakers, the type we see at funerals these days. The volume had been turned up so loud as to make the call of the mate for payment inaudible.
I dropped by at the salon to fix my hair on my way home and apart from the owner’s TV set which was on , a small radio was also on with volume raised so high! Adjacent to the salon was a music recording studio which was at full blast. When I asked what was happening there, the response I got was “Oh, they sell CDs”… Since when did the selling of CDs give one the licence to make noise?
My hair done, I decided to make the rest of the journey home on foot only to encounter a convoy of speeding vehicles, all touting their horns. My enquiry revealed that the convoy was escorting a departed colleague to the cemetery! So why the rush and excitement if they were only on their way to bury the dead? I questioned aloud, not expecting an answer from any one though.
Thank God I’m home now. After dinner I thought I could lie down and consume myself in what I call “inflection”, “thinking about myself”. Alas, it is a Saturday night and we are all expected to be part of Prophet Odeneho, Bishop Nyame Ba and Pastor Mente Gyae’s huhudios all-night vigils, which cross we the residents must bear on a weekly basis. With the loud music and speaking in tongues into microphones complemented by three drinking bars attacking from all flanks of my room, I could do nothing close to sleep before the cocks took over at dawn. Another sleepless night as usual as I grudgingly gathered my wretched body out of bed but not out of sleep.
Such is the plight of an average Accra dweller. So when do we have the serenity to think? Is noise becoming a virtue?
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not think so. This agency is mandated to prescribe standards and guidelines relating to the pollution of air, water, land and noise. It liaises and co-operates with government agencies and other bodies and institutions to protect the environment.
Mrs Angelina Tutuah Mensah, Deputy Director, Public Affairs of the EPA, says the EPA has intensified its campaigns to educate the public that it is a criminal offence to make noise and that noise poses serious health hazards including loss of hearing. The EPA is doing this through various public and private media. It is to continue with these campaigns on community and experimental radios and will employ the organisation of regional environmental durbars for the purpose.
Significantly, the daily complaints the EPA has been receiving has increased from 10 to 35 recently, an indication that people are not happy about noise and would not allow others to disturb their peace. The other side of this increase in the number of complaints, however, could be that those who are creating noise are not stopping the practice or that more people are making noise!
So what are our options as citizens being disturbed by noise? Mrs Mensah explains that the individual so disturbed should approach the person making the noise for a dialogue on the matter. If the noise persists, he/she should write to the metropolitan, municipal or district assembly and copy the EPA. What the EPA does after receiving such complaint is to come to the location with equipment/machines to monitor the situation with the view to finding out if the noise being made is permissible. Once it establishes that the noise is indeed unacceptable, it writes to the person making the noise. If he does not stop, it then sends the matter to court.
The EPA has great challenges in carrying out this function which is only a fraction of its mandate, with only 350 professionals. Mrs Mensah spoke of dangers staff faced going out deep into the night to measure noise levels and the possibility of being mistaken for armed robbers especially because of the equipment they go with. Added to this, she notes that the family life of personnel was being deeply affected.
She was of the opinion that the fines that went with those convicted for making noise was not serving as a deterrent and called for the strengthening of the laws to be able to review such fines.
Another challenge facing the EPA is the inactiveness of the assemblies in checking noisemaking.
The Local Government Act 1993 (Act 462) empowers the District Assembly by section 10(3) (e) to be responsible for the development, improvement and management of human settlement and the environment in the district.
Each District Assembly is also established by Act 462 as the Planning Authority for its area of authority. One important function of the Planning Authority, very relevant to having implications for noise pollution control is its powers of enforcement against nuisance.
Section 296(7) makes it an offence in any town to willfully or wantonly and after being warned to desist, make any loud or unseemly noise to disturb any person.
The Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA) for instance has bye laws (1995) that prohibit the sale of records and other recorded music without approval and licence. The law prohibits the playing of any recorded music in public for advertising purpose so as to cause a public nuisance, and the prohibition of the playing of music in night clubs, restaurants or drinking bars or other places of refreshment or entertainment to an extent of causing public nuisance.
The bye-laws also prohibit the playing of music when conducting a religious service so loudly so as to cause a nuisance to the public and residents in the area!
So with all these laws why do the assemblies look on while such noise goes on? Why do people continue to disturb the peace of others in their communities?
Mr Kwao Sackey, Chief Executive of the Ga East Municipal Assembly, explained in an interview at Abokobi that the assembly had been receiving many complaints about noise being created by drinking bars and churches in the municipality but the assembly’s difficulty in checking the situation was the lack of a doscimeter— an instrument for measuring noise levels.
He said the assembly had to prove in court that a person was making noise above the permitted level of 55 decibels and this could only be done by the doscimeter which the assembly does not have.
“ So for now we try to do mediation between the complainant and the person a complaint has been brought against”, he said.
He said noise-making was a serious problem at low-income areas where people seem more accommodating of noise from churches and would not want to complain for fear of being labelled witches and wizards.
Mr Joseph Quacoe, Municipal Environmental Officer (Public Health), appealed to the public for assistance to procure a doscimeter for the assembly to aid it in its work since requests for money to buy one has not yielded response.
The doscimeter costs GH¢8,000.
The challenges faced by the EPA and the assemblies and the general attitude of Ghanaians towards noise may mean that noise-making would be part of us for a long time to come. For those of us who are suffering from excessive noise, prayers to change the heart of noise-makers may seem our only way out now!
Writer’s e-mail: aamakai@hotmail.com
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
GIVE ME BACK MY CHILDHOOD
By Doreen Hammond
MY name is Afia. I am 14 and would like to share my story with all those who would like to listen. Is it a sad story? Not exactly, but I wouldn’t call it a sweet one either. It is all about how I have been denied the sweet childhood my mummy told me she had when she was my age.
This sweet childhood of yesteryears is gradually passing me by and I may miss it forever. It is all about this enterprise called education which mummy insists I should have in order to become somebody in future. And so now I wake up at 4.30 a.m. in order to be in school by 7.30 a.m.
We live at one of the new sites in the city and so it takes us not less than one and a half hours to get to the school. So why don’t I attend a school around my community? Well, mum insists that she wants me to be in a GOOD school and the ones in the neighbourhood are not exactly her idea of good schools! So there are bad schools and good schools? And how does one end up in either a good or a bad school? Is it a matter of choice or what?
I get home around 6 p.m. every day, after two hours of slugging it out in traffic. After dinner and a quick shower (mum says every female needs a shower twice a day! True?), I go to my books to attend to the legion of homework that accompanies me home daily. With eyes barely opened after doing my homework, I go through my notes for the next day’s activities. Then I retire to bed late, feeling drained of all my energy.
If ever I harbour any hope of using the weekend for some rest and any personal work, that is not to be. At 8.30 a.m. on Saturdays I am back in school for weekend classes. And then on Sundays the home teacher arrives after church and stays till evening.
As if this is not enough, vacations are no longer used for the purpose for which they are intended. They are no longer about breaking off from academic work, playing with my friends and fallowing the brain for next term’s school work. It is all about summer school, even though, according to mummy, summer and winter used not to be part of our weather pattern. So even on vacation I have the misfortune of still being in school. My whole life is school, school and school!
Poor Afia, her situation is a general reflection of what most children, especially those in the cities, go through on a daily basis.
What has changed so much that preparing our children for the Basic Education Certificate Examination looks like preparing them to go to war? Yet, in spite of all the extra classes, there are complaints that our children are generally not performing well in the BECE, especially in English, the very medium of instruction, and Mathematics.
The numerous pronouncements made by the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service against extra classes notwithstanding, they continue in earnest. Various sums of money are collected from parents to organise these classes.
The schools argue that the children need extra tuition to be able to cover the syllabi. Some make a case for extra classes as a means for helping the weak ones; that is, children who need more time to grasp what they are taught in class.
Some parents are of the view that the extra classes must be held in the interest of the children but should be at no cost to parents. Other parents argue that the teachers must be given some incentives, not necessarily remuneration, for teaching the children. Others are still of the opinion that additional classes or tuition is required when there is the need for final-year pupils and students to complete the syllabi.
Until recently when it became the norm in many basic and second-cycle schools, extra classes were used to polish up pupils who were about to write their examination. Teachers used extra classes to discuss past examination questions and give students guidelines on how to answer questions.
For now, the extra classes continue, in spite of the concerns raised against them, and pupils are charged for those classes. Even pupils in classes as low as Primary One in some schools attend extra classes. Indeed, in some schools failure to pay for extra classes results in hot lashes for the children.
This gives the impression that extra classes are a means for teachers to make some money. After all, when teachers go to the filling station to buy fuel, the attendant’s knowledge that they are teachers does not put fuel in the cars. They have to pay with money.
So why can’t the syllabi be covered during normal school hours? Is it that the syllabi have been so loaded that they are overworking both teachers and pupils, to the extent that even vacations are no vacations?
On most school compounds during vacation, it is common to see students dressed in all kinds of attire and hanging out in groups doing everything and anything, apart from studying. Is that what has become known as the summer school?
Have rest and vacation no longer a place in a child’s upbringing? What happened to the mock cooking (enkro bo), ampe, hop scotch, etc. that were part of our growing up?
While parents are busy looking for money to pay bills and fees, children continuously sit in the classrooms. Is it all going to be about money, since, for the schools, that seems the motivation for organising all kinds of classes?
Is the time allotted for schoolwork so short that teachers cannot finish the syllabi within the stipulated period? Children used to learn through play but they now have little time for that. They have to take their breakfast as they ride in cars to school and their parents use the little time between the time they arrive in school and the time they run off into their classrooms to teach them the homework they are loaded with.
And what impact do we expect a teacher who is always tired and overloaded with teaching to have on his pupils? Do they have time to prepare their notes?
According to the Head of the Public Relations Unit of the GES, Mr Charles Parker-Allotey, the GES does not think that the syllabi can not be covered within the normal school hours. He said, however, that the GES had decided that instructional hours in basic schools be increased from five to six hours to stop the organisation of extra classes.
The increase in hours would be at no cost to parents, he noted, adding that the suggestion had been sent in a memo to the Ministry of Education for consideration and approval.
The decision, he said, was in response to persistent requests by basic schools that they needed to organise extra classes in order to cover the syllabi. He said the GES management thought an additional hour should be able to help teachers cover the syllabi.
In taking that decision, Mr Parker-Allotey said, the management of the GES considered the burden on parents financially and pupils/students who got no rest because of the organisation of extra classes.
He explained that as early as 6.30 a.m. some pupils had to be in school for extra classes before the normal school hours began and have another session of extra classes, known as “extra extra classes”, after the normal school hours. He said the GES management considered the fact that workers in the Civil Service worked for 12 hours and that the additional hour for instruction in schools would not be out of place.
“The GES also compared the instructional hours in Ghana to those in other African countries and even some countries outside Africa and saw that we have very few hours,” Mr Parker-Allotey stated.
Child psychologists are of the view that for a holistic upbringing of the child, playing, especially with his or her peers, is very important. This is even so in our case where most schools do not even have facilities for outdoor games. Here, we are talking about games such as football.
What kind of children are we nurturing? We need to give children back their childhood!
Writer’s e-mail: aamakai@hotmail.com
MY name is Afia. I am 14 and would like to share my story with all those who would like to listen. Is it a sad story? Not exactly, but I wouldn’t call it a sweet one either. It is all about how I have been denied the sweet childhood my mummy told me she had when she was my age.
This sweet childhood of yesteryears is gradually passing me by and I may miss it forever. It is all about this enterprise called education which mummy insists I should have in order to become somebody in future. And so now I wake up at 4.30 a.m. in order to be in school by 7.30 a.m.
We live at one of the new sites in the city and so it takes us not less than one and a half hours to get to the school. So why don’t I attend a school around my community? Well, mum insists that she wants me to be in a GOOD school and the ones in the neighbourhood are not exactly her idea of good schools! So there are bad schools and good schools? And how does one end up in either a good or a bad school? Is it a matter of choice or what?
I get home around 6 p.m. every day, after two hours of slugging it out in traffic. After dinner and a quick shower (mum says every female needs a shower twice a day! True?), I go to my books to attend to the legion of homework that accompanies me home daily. With eyes barely opened after doing my homework, I go through my notes for the next day’s activities. Then I retire to bed late, feeling drained of all my energy.
If ever I harbour any hope of using the weekend for some rest and any personal work, that is not to be. At 8.30 a.m. on Saturdays I am back in school for weekend classes. And then on Sundays the home teacher arrives after church and stays till evening.
As if this is not enough, vacations are no longer used for the purpose for which they are intended. They are no longer about breaking off from academic work, playing with my friends and fallowing the brain for next term’s school work. It is all about summer school, even though, according to mummy, summer and winter used not to be part of our weather pattern. So even on vacation I have the misfortune of still being in school. My whole life is school, school and school!
Poor Afia, her situation is a general reflection of what most children, especially those in the cities, go through on a daily basis.
What has changed so much that preparing our children for the Basic Education Certificate Examination looks like preparing them to go to war? Yet, in spite of all the extra classes, there are complaints that our children are generally not performing well in the BECE, especially in English, the very medium of instruction, and Mathematics.
The numerous pronouncements made by the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service against extra classes notwithstanding, they continue in earnest. Various sums of money are collected from parents to organise these classes.
The schools argue that the children need extra tuition to be able to cover the syllabi. Some make a case for extra classes as a means for helping the weak ones; that is, children who need more time to grasp what they are taught in class.
Some parents are of the view that the extra classes must be held in the interest of the children but should be at no cost to parents. Other parents argue that the teachers must be given some incentives, not necessarily remuneration, for teaching the children. Others are still of the opinion that additional classes or tuition is required when there is the need for final-year pupils and students to complete the syllabi.
Until recently when it became the norm in many basic and second-cycle schools, extra classes were used to polish up pupils who were about to write their examination. Teachers used extra classes to discuss past examination questions and give students guidelines on how to answer questions.
For now, the extra classes continue, in spite of the concerns raised against them, and pupils are charged for those classes. Even pupils in classes as low as Primary One in some schools attend extra classes. Indeed, in some schools failure to pay for extra classes results in hot lashes for the children.
This gives the impression that extra classes are a means for teachers to make some money. After all, when teachers go to the filling station to buy fuel, the attendant’s knowledge that they are teachers does not put fuel in the cars. They have to pay with money.
So why can’t the syllabi be covered during normal school hours? Is it that the syllabi have been so loaded that they are overworking both teachers and pupils, to the extent that even vacations are no vacations?
On most school compounds during vacation, it is common to see students dressed in all kinds of attire and hanging out in groups doing everything and anything, apart from studying. Is that what has become known as the summer school?
Have rest and vacation no longer a place in a child’s upbringing? What happened to the mock cooking (enkro bo), ampe, hop scotch, etc. that were part of our growing up?
While parents are busy looking for money to pay bills and fees, children continuously sit in the classrooms. Is it all going to be about money, since, for the schools, that seems the motivation for organising all kinds of classes?
Is the time allotted for schoolwork so short that teachers cannot finish the syllabi within the stipulated period? Children used to learn through play but they now have little time for that. They have to take their breakfast as they ride in cars to school and their parents use the little time between the time they arrive in school and the time they run off into their classrooms to teach them the homework they are loaded with.
And what impact do we expect a teacher who is always tired and overloaded with teaching to have on his pupils? Do they have time to prepare their notes?
According to the Head of the Public Relations Unit of the GES, Mr Charles Parker-Allotey, the GES does not think that the syllabi can not be covered within the normal school hours. He said, however, that the GES had decided that instructional hours in basic schools be increased from five to six hours to stop the organisation of extra classes.
The increase in hours would be at no cost to parents, he noted, adding that the suggestion had been sent in a memo to the Ministry of Education for consideration and approval.
The decision, he said, was in response to persistent requests by basic schools that they needed to organise extra classes in order to cover the syllabi. He said the GES management thought an additional hour should be able to help teachers cover the syllabi.
In taking that decision, Mr Parker-Allotey said, the management of the GES considered the burden on parents financially and pupils/students who got no rest because of the organisation of extra classes.
He explained that as early as 6.30 a.m. some pupils had to be in school for extra classes before the normal school hours began and have another session of extra classes, known as “extra extra classes”, after the normal school hours. He said the GES management considered the fact that workers in the Civil Service worked for 12 hours and that the additional hour for instruction in schools would not be out of place.
“The GES also compared the instructional hours in Ghana to those in other African countries and even some countries outside Africa and saw that we have very few hours,” Mr Parker-Allotey stated.
Child psychologists are of the view that for a holistic upbringing of the child, playing, especially with his or her peers, is very important. This is even so in our case where most schools do not even have facilities for outdoor games. Here, we are talking about games such as football.
What kind of children are we nurturing? We need to give children back their childhood!
Writer’s e-mail: aamakai@hotmail.com
Monday, July 11, 2011
MODERN DAY EDUCATION OR 419?
MODERN DAY EDUCATION OR 419?
By Doreen Hammond
On trees and in between trees, between the stands of billboards, on electric poles and street lights, walls of public toilets, uncompleted buildings and stalls hang different kinds of banners and posters advertising admission for various educational institutions. The newspapers, television and radio stations are not left out.
They include adverts for crèches, primary schools, computer training, language schools, pre- universities and universities and most popular among them, remedial classes.
The latest I saw yesterday was a banner advertising “Last minute, exam tips for Special WASSCE, English and Maths” when students are promised to come “face to face with examiners”. The only indication of a contact on the advert was a cell phone number, no location address.
The entry requirement of some of these pre-tertiary institutions is “ no academic qualification needed”. Significant about the phenomenon is the use of names which come very close to those of known and reputable institutions world-wide. Obviously, this is to create an imaginary link for the purpose of getting some credibility rubbed on them. So a name like Hurry Institute is then changed to Harry for this purpose. A derivative of Havard is also used for obvious effect. And by some co-incidence if you like, some of these institutes advertise their location prominently—Legon! Need I say why?
The worry is that, there seems a ready market for such institutions as indicated by the increasing number of such adverts by the day. Ghanaians have realised the importance of education and most parents would squeeze water out of stone to ensure that their children receive the best of education. But must this be a justification for charlatans to milk them dry of their hard earned money under the guise of providing this all important service of education?
Can just anybody with any infrastructure provide a service as important as education? And so now we have institutions operating from metal containers and some hotel conference rooms purporting to be offering graduate and post graduate courses . Something is just not being done right.
Recently, the General Secretary of the Ghana Journalists Association, Mr Bright Blewu, expressed concern about the existence of mushroom journalism institutions which are churning out half- baked journalists. For him, this situation is contributing to the low standards of journalism the country is now facing.
Mr Blewu said that although the association had complained to the National Accreditation Board (NAB), these institutions continued to operate with impunity while the board and the entire society look on helplessly.
Just a few days ago it took the intervention of a traditional chief to warn the public about the emergence of some schools purporting to be running courses on oil and gas for job seekers. He appropriately warned the public to be wary of these so - called Oil and Gas Universities.
While the action of the chief is commendable, it nevertheless questions the role of the state institution empowered to give accreditation to educational institutions. For instance, has the board any criteria for determining who qualifies for accreditation and is this criterion being followed to the letter?
Does the board also have enforcement powers and the legal backing to ensure that schools which do not meet the criteria do not operate? Who protects the Ghanaian from educational institutions which are not worth attending?
The sad reality is that the situation the GJA General Secretary spoke about is not only limited to journalism but other professions as well. As more of these sub-standard institutions are encouraged to flourish through our collective commission or omission, it is our human capacity which stands to suffer; if it has not already.
So we will have half- baked teachers, accountants, journalists, nurses, business people etc. and mother Ghana will be the ultimate loser. As it is now, it looks like getting an accreditation to set up an institution is just routine and that once you apply you must necessarily get it.
The NAB was established by the Government of Ghana in 1993 with the enactment of PNDCL 317, 1993 to accredit both public and private (tertiary) institutions with regard to the contents and standards of their programmes.
It is to determine, in consultation with the appropriate institution or body, the programme and requirements for the proper operation of that institution and the maintenance of acceptable levels of academic or professional standards. It determines the equivalence of diplomas, certificates and other qualifications awarded by institutions in Ghana or elsewhere.
By its mandate, NAB is to accredit all categories of tertiary institutions, be they universities, university colleges, polytechnics, colleges, schools, institutions, academies, or tutorial colleges.
The big question is how do parents and or prospective students ascertain the accreditation status of an institution before enrolment?
Though the Board publishes information about accredited institutions from time to time in the national newspapers and the Gazette, this is rather sporadic and does not seem to deter charlatans whose only motivation is to enrich themselves at the expense of innocent Ghanaians who want to be educated. The information can also be obtained from the Secretariat of the NAB but how practicable is this for everyone seeking admission into an educational institution?
By Regulation 19(2) of L. I. 1700 (2002) :
“No person or institution shall
(a) Advertise or continue to advertise or in any manner hold itself out to the public as a tertiary institution;
(b) admit or continue to admit students or conduct courses or programmes of instruction leading to an award of certificates, diplomas or degrees;
(c) continue to operate as a tertiary institution where the institution’s authorisation, accreditation or registration has been suspended or revoked; or
(d) otherwise embark upon or continue with any activity preparatory to the establishment of facilities for tertiary education, after the commencement of these Regulations unless the person or institution complies with these Regulations”.
Regulation 19(3) of L. I. 1700 adds that: “Any person or institution that contravenes any provision of Sub-regulation (2) commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding 250 penalty units”.
But proprietors easily counter such publications with vigorous and aggressive advertising campaigns in the media.
The question is : how many of these unaccredited institutions have been brought to book at the instance of NAB?
On its website, the NAB warns that in recent times, the Board has received certificates acquired online for evaluation. Its investigations have revealed that these certificates are fake, as the institutions supposed to have issued them do not exist. It has therefore warned employers, institutions, parents and individuals to be wary of such online qualifications and endeavour to seek information from the National Accreditation Board.
Is a warning from NAB enough? Must such unaccredited institutions be allowed to flourish when their only motivation seems to be to swindle people whose only crime is seeking education?
Mr Kwame Dattey, Executive Secretary of the NAB, who may be the one to provide answers to the many questions raised appears to be similarly worried about the situation. He says that NAB also finds it difficult to trace some of these institutions which advertise themselves without accreditation ( which is illegal) but was ready to follow hints from the public to investigate them and then hand over the matter to the security agencies.
He explained that some of these institutions were ignorant about the need to get accreditation and in some cases the NAB educates them after asking them to remove their banners/adverts .
The NAB has a critical role to play in ensuring that we have the right institutions to train our work force for the present and the future. For now we cannot say the Board is operating at its optimum. It has challenges with monitoring . It is about time we retooled and built the capacity of the Board to perform as per its mandate. Failure to do this and we risk having more square pegs in round holes in the not too distant future.
Writer’s e-mail: aamakai@hotmail.com
By Doreen Hammond
On trees and in between trees, between the stands of billboards, on electric poles and street lights, walls of public toilets, uncompleted buildings and stalls hang different kinds of banners and posters advertising admission for various educational institutions. The newspapers, television and radio stations are not left out.
They include adverts for crèches, primary schools, computer training, language schools, pre- universities and universities and most popular among them, remedial classes.
The latest I saw yesterday was a banner advertising “Last minute, exam tips for Special WASSCE, English and Maths” when students are promised to come “face to face with examiners”. The only indication of a contact on the advert was a cell phone number, no location address.
The entry requirement of some of these pre-tertiary institutions is “ no academic qualification needed”. Significant about the phenomenon is the use of names which come very close to those of known and reputable institutions world-wide. Obviously, this is to create an imaginary link for the purpose of getting some credibility rubbed on them. So a name like Hurry Institute is then changed to Harry for this purpose. A derivative of Havard is also used for obvious effect. And by some co-incidence if you like, some of these institutes advertise their location prominently—Legon! Need I say why?
The worry is that, there seems a ready market for such institutions as indicated by the increasing number of such adverts by the day. Ghanaians have realised the importance of education and most parents would squeeze water out of stone to ensure that their children receive the best of education. But must this be a justification for charlatans to milk them dry of their hard earned money under the guise of providing this all important service of education?
Can just anybody with any infrastructure provide a service as important as education? And so now we have institutions operating from metal containers and some hotel conference rooms purporting to be offering graduate and post graduate courses . Something is just not being done right.
Recently, the General Secretary of the Ghana Journalists Association, Mr Bright Blewu, expressed concern about the existence of mushroom journalism institutions which are churning out half- baked journalists. For him, this situation is contributing to the low standards of journalism the country is now facing.
Mr Blewu said that although the association had complained to the National Accreditation Board (NAB), these institutions continued to operate with impunity while the board and the entire society look on helplessly.
Just a few days ago it took the intervention of a traditional chief to warn the public about the emergence of some schools purporting to be running courses on oil and gas for job seekers. He appropriately warned the public to be wary of these so - called Oil and Gas Universities.
While the action of the chief is commendable, it nevertheless questions the role of the state institution empowered to give accreditation to educational institutions. For instance, has the board any criteria for determining who qualifies for accreditation and is this criterion being followed to the letter?
Does the board also have enforcement powers and the legal backing to ensure that schools which do not meet the criteria do not operate? Who protects the Ghanaian from educational institutions which are not worth attending?
The sad reality is that the situation the GJA General Secretary spoke about is not only limited to journalism but other professions as well. As more of these sub-standard institutions are encouraged to flourish through our collective commission or omission, it is our human capacity which stands to suffer; if it has not already.
So we will have half- baked teachers, accountants, journalists, nurses, business people etc. and mother Ghana will be the ultimate loser. As it is now, it looks like getting an accreditation to set up an institution is just routine and that once you apply you must necessarily get it.
The NAB was established by the Government of Ghana in 1993 with the enactment of PNDCL 317, 1993 to accredit both public and private (tertiary) institutions with regard to the contents and standards of their programmes.
It is to determine, in consultation with the appropriate institution or body, the programme and requirements for the proper operation of that institution and the maintenance of acceptable levels of academic or professional standards. It determines the equivalence of diplomas, certificates and other qualifications awarded by institutions in Ghana or elsewhere.
By its mandate, NAB is to accredit all categories of tertiary institutions, be they universities, university colleges, polytechnics, colleges, schools, institutions, academies, or tutorial colleges.
The big question is how do parents and or prospective students ascertain the accreditation status of an institution before enrolment?
Though the Board publishes information about accredited institutions from time to time in the national newspapers and the Gazette, this is rather sporadic and does not seem to deter charlatans whose only motivation is to enrich themselves at the expense of innocent Ghanaians who want to be educated. The information can also be obtained from the Secretariat of the NAB but how practicable is this for everyone seeking admission into an educational institution?
By Regulation 19(2) of L. I. 1700 (2002) :
“No person or institution shall
(a) Advertise or continue to advertise or in any manner hold itself out to the public as a tertiary institution;
(b) admit or continue to admit students or conduct courses or programmes of instruction leading to an award of certificates, diplomas or degrees;
(c) continue to operate as a tertiary institution where the institution’s authorisation, accreditation or registration has been suspended or revoked; or
(d) otherwise embark upon or continue with any activity preparatory to the establishment of facilities for tertiary education, after the commencement of these Regulations unless the person or institution complies with these Regulations”.
Regulation 19(3) of L. I. 1700 adds that: “Any person or institution that contravenes any provision of Sub-regulation (2) commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding 250 penalty units”.
But proprietors easily counter such publications with vigorous and aggressive advertising campaigns in the media.
The question is : how many of these unaccredited institutions have been brought to book at the instance of NAB?
On its website, the NAB warns that in recent times, the Board has received certificates acquired online for evaluation. Its investigations have revealed that these certificates are fake, as the institutions supposed to have issued them do not exist. It has therefore warned employers, institutions, parents and individuals to be wary of such online qualifications and endeavour to seek information from the National Accreditation Board.
Is a warning from NAB enough? Must such unaccredited institutions be allowed to flourish when their only motivation seems to be to swindle people whose only crime is seeking education?
Mr Kwame Dattey, Executive Secretary of the NAB, who may be the one to provide answers to the many questions raised appears to be similarly worried about the situation. He says that NAB also finds it difficult to trace some of these institutions which advertise themselves without accreditation ( which is illegal) but was ready to follow hints from the public to investigate them and then hand over the matter to the security agencies.
He explained that some of these institutions were ignorant about the need to get accreditation and in some cases the NAB educates them after asking them to remove their banners/adverts .
The NAB has a critical role to play in ensuring that we have the right institutions to train our work force for the present and the future. For now we cannot say the Board is operating at its optimum. It has challenges with monitoring . It is about time we retooled and built the capacity of the Board to perform as per its mandate. Failure to do this and we risk having more square pegs in round holes in the not too distant future.
Writer’s e-mail: aamakai@hotmail.com
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
OUR WASTE MANAGEMENT IN THE 21ST CENTURY
By Doreen Hammond
The driver of a waste collection truck was recently assaulted by residents of an area where he had gone to dump refuse. It was an unfortunate incident but the residents were offended that he was bringing filth and, therefore, disease to the area so they would not sit idle and watch him do that . That was why they took the law into their own hands.
But according to the driver, he had been carrying the waste for so long with no disposal site available hence his decision to dump it somewhere. The above scenario shows how dire the waste disposal situation in Accra has become. With old sites full and communities not ready to accommodate anymore of such sites, the future of our waste disposal looks rather bleak.
On my way from a funeral recently, I missed a turn and ended up somewhere on the Pantang Hospital Road, towards Abokobi where I encountered what can only be described as a frightening sight. A huge area full of refuse, supposed to be a dumping site right in the middle of a residential community. The area, to put it mildly, is inundated with plastic/polythene bags; especially those of pure water sachets. There is another huge rubbish dump at Achimota which is often decorated with vultures, full of plastic bags and stench. There may be other such refuse dumps in the city of Accra but these two are enough to humble you into fear.
What kind of waste management system are we practising? All that we are doing now is just transferring waste from one part of town to another. So you may be paying for your domestic waste to be carried away but the question is : Where is that waste headed for and how is it treated?
Our waste disposal methods, especially in this 21st Century brings to the fore the kind of leadership we have been cursed with as a people, both in the past and present. For instance, for how long will our leadership continue to play politics with this plastic bag menace as our environment continues to suffer choked gutters and its attendant floods? Has it not become more than obvious that we do not have the capacity to handle this type of waste and that the best way out is to ban it, as has been done in Rwanda and Kenya? After all we have not always lived with this polythene so why are we behaving as if without it our lives will come to a halt?
The sad reality is that any country which disposes of its waste in this crude manner in this 21st Century is only courting cholera and similar diseases as we are doing now.
As we walk in our neighbourhoods we encounter them; as we drive on the streets of Accra and even the remotest parts of our land, we are constantly reminded of how plastic waste now rules our lives; they fly all over hitting our windscreens and several of them are trapped even in our barbed wire fences. We swim with plastic bags on our beaches and even when we dig to plant, black polythene bags stare at us!
At traffic lights in the city are found itinerant vendors of rodenticide, powders and traps for control of rats, cockroaches and other crawling and flying household pests. These vendors seem to be doing brisk business. At the Goldhouse traffic lights, for instance, one of these hawkers shoved the dried carcass of mice at my side glass in a bid to advertise his rodenticide which he had nicknamed “Kwakwe last stop”, literally translated as “the last stop for mice”. Even from our primary school environmental studies which has now been named Citizenship Education, we know the kind of environment these pests thrive in—filth! The health effects of the continuous use of these rodenticide and powders is another matter but we have lived in insanitary conditions for years now with no sign of solution in sight.
Or are we waiting until such time that we begin choking in the filth before we go and contract a foreign loan and contract a foreign company to come and deal with it like we did with the Korle Lagoon and others? Or we are waiting for the IMF and others to come in and tell us that we live in filth so we should do this and that before the next budgetary support would be released?
Our leadership must begin to take the bull by the horns and take drastic decisions even if the short-term effect would be unpleasant. Can you imagine where this polythene menace will take us in the next 10 years? Your guess is as good as mine.
The Accra Metropolitan Chief Executive, Mr Alfred Vanderpuije, recently announced that from 2015, Accra would transform its waste disposal methods and turn waste into other productive uses.
Well said, Mr Mayor, but the sad reality is that at the rate we are moving, we may not be alive to put his beautiful plans in action in 2015. If we must tackle the waste menace then it is now or never. And this is where I think Mr Vanderpuije’s focus should be.
To put it bluntly, Accra’s waste disposal arrangements in this modern day and age and that of several other towns and cities in this land of ours are not only shambolic but a shame. We must begin to look at a more holistic waste disposal industry that goes beyond just collecting our waste from one point to another and this must be fast, for time is not on our side.
Writer’s email: aamakai@hotmail.com
The driver of a waste collection truck was recently assaulted by residents of an area where he had gone to dump refuse. It was an unfortunate incident but the residents were offended that he was bringing filth and, therefore, disease to the area so they would not sit idle and watch him do that . That was why they took the law into their own hands.
But according to the driver, he had been carrying the waste for so long with no disposal site available hence his decision to dump it somewhere. The above scenario shows how dire the waste disposal situation in Accra has become. With old sites full and communities not ready to accommodate anymore of such sites, the future of our waste disposal looks rather bleak.
On my way from a funeral recently, I missed a turn and ended up somewhere on the Pantang Hospital Road, towards Abokobi where I encountered what can only be described as a frightening sight. A huge area full of refuse, supposed to be a dumping site right in the middle of a residential community. The area, to put it mildly, is inundated with plastic/polythene bags; especially those of pure water sachets. There is another huge rubbish dump at Achimota which is often decorated with vultures, full of plastic bags and stench. There may be other such refuse dumps in the city of Accra but these two are enough to humble you into fear.
What kind of waste management system are we practising? All that we are doing now is just transferring waste from one part of town to another. So you may be paying for your domestic waste to be carried away but the question is : Where is that waste headed for and how is it treated?
Our waste disposal methods, especially in this 21st Century brings to the fore the kind of leadership we have been cursed with as a people, both in the past and present. For instance, for how long will our leadership continue to play politics with this plastic bag menace as our environment continues to suffer choked gutters and its attendant floods? Has it not become more than obvious that we do not have the capacity to handle this type of waste and that the best way out is to ban it, as has been done in Rwanda and Kenya? After all we have not always lived with this polythene so why are we behaving as if without it our lives will come to a halt?
The sad reality is that any country which disposes of its waste in this crude manner in this 21st Century is only courting cholera and similar diseases as we are doing now.
As we walk in our neighbourhoods we encounter them; as we drive on the streets of Accra and even the remotest parts of our land, we are constantly reminded of how plastic waste now rules our lives; they fly all over hitting our windscreens and several of them are trapped even in our barbed wire fences. We swim with plastic bags on our beaches and even when we dig to plant, black polythene bags stare at us!
At traffic lights in the city are found itinerant vendors of rodenticide, powders and traps for control of rats, cockroaches and other crawling and flying household pests. These vendors seem to be doing brisk business. At the Goldhouse traffic lights, for instance, one of these hawkers shoved the dried carcass of mice at my side glass in a bid to advertise his rodenticide which he had nicknamed “Kwakwe last stop”, literally translated as “the last stop for mice”. Even from our primary school environmental studies which has now been named Citizenship Education, we know the kind of environment these pests thrive in—filth! The health effects of the continuous use of these rodenticide and powders is another matter but we have lived in insanitary conditions for years now with no sign of solution in sight.
Or are we waiting until such time that we begin choking in the filth before we go and contract a foreign loan and contract a foreign company to come and deal with it like we did with the Korle Lagoon and others? Or we are waiting for the IMF and others to come in and tell us that we live in filth so we should do this and that before the next budgetary support would be released?
Our leadership must begin to take the bull by the horns and take drastic decisions even if the short-term effect would be unpleasant. Can you imagine where this polythene menace will take us in the next 10 years? Your guess is as good as mine.
The Accra Metropolitan Chief Executive, Mr Alfred Vanderpuije, recently announced that from 2015, Accra would transform its waste disposal methods and turn waste into other productive uses.
Well said, Mr Mayor, but the sad reality is that at the rate we are moving, we may not be alive to put his beautiful plans in action in 2015. If we must tackle the waste menace then it is now or never. And this is where I think Mr Vanderpuije’s focus should be.
To put it bluntly, Accra’s waste disposal arrangements in this modern day and age and that of several other towns and cities in this land of ours are not only shambolic but a shame. We must begin to look at a more holistic waste disposal industry that goes beyond just collecting our waste from one point to another and this must be fast, for time is not on our side.
Writer’s email: aamakai@hotmail.com
Friday, May 20, 2011
Time to sanitise the movie industry
By Doreen Hammond
Almost on a daily basis, Ghanaian producers are coming out with what they want us to believe are movies. Just watching the excerpts of these movies as adverts on our television sets tells us what to expect and watching them confirms it.
Almost all of them are about witchcraft, sex, insults, profanity, occultism and wickedness; sometimes for no reason. It is either a mother-in-law dislikes her daughter-in-law so much that she continuously destroys the babies in her womb or someone disliking another person so much that he puts poison in his food to cause death or spiritually gives him an “everlasting sore”.
One of these movies recently released is a combination of little parts of several western movies. I could simply not believe my eyes! What happened to originality? A person gets assaulted or even murdered in these movies and the Police is nowhere in sight. A child is physically or mentally abused in this modern day and all the movie makes us believe is that it will take a ghost to stop the abuse. And by the time this ghost appears too much harm has been done!
This trend is indeed worrisome. It is worrisome because the arts are one of the most powerful tools that shape the consciousness of any society. It mobilises people for national development in the direction they want to go as a people. Is this really the way we want to go? Watch an American movie and you are inspired by the roles played by those representing Americans in these movies. They are always the strong and strong-willed, smartest, determined and witty. The Indians display their dancing and singing skills and tell their stories without going obscene even if the sound which follows their blows is too loud for a human being to possibly survive!
In contrast, our movies are so steeped in spiritualism, occultism and outright profanity to the extent of losing reason. Is it, therefore, surprising that we still have people who will bypass the health facility and head for the shrine at the slightest headache and still be surrounded by filth and be surprised that cholera is killing us? When science has proven that it is filth and the eating of faecal matter that causes cholera and headaches are no strange diseases in the hospital?
Usually, there is no clear-cut story line, plot or any moral lessons to be learnt from these movies and they seem to go on and on and on with no substance. It is as if the actors go on location to decide what to do and once it is recorded, there is no review or editing. Even the entertainment value of these movies is questionable as witchcraft and the powers of the underworld are continuously hyped. We don’t even have an image of our own sasabonsam but the computer generated images of creatures we find in Sinbad.
The titles of most of these movies indicate that the producers never have any international audience in mind. Examples are Animguasie, Bantama Aware, King Kong, Eno Samanpa, Heaven Akwantuo, Nsohwe mu Nsohwe and Nebuchadnezzar. Most of them have no less than two parts with some, like Kyeiwaa, running into many parts . It leaves one wondering whether those movies go through any scrutiny at all.
Even in the days of old when technology was less advanced, we used what we had to entertain and educate ourselves as a people. We could learn practical lessons from watching Osofo Dadzie, Obra and a few others and also entertain ourselves, even if they were on black and white screens. Why not now? We are too busy copying others that we now see Ghanaians dressed in lace with big headgear in the kitchen or just relaxing at home. But that is not real, for you and I know that Ghanaian women hardly dress like that at home! Even the Nigerians whom we may be copying are gradually discarding those kind of movies which we are busily embracing now. If they were giving the kind of titles we are giving now, I doubt if they could have broken into our market. A movie is set in a pre–colonial era , in some forest yet you find an actress wearing clothes made from jute (kotoku), but wearing acrylic nails!
Tell me what will attract a Nigerian or a Sierra-Leonean or a South African to watch a movie titled Bantama Aware. Even when we attempt to give English subtitles to these movies it is a great struggle; the translated English is so bad grammatically, and the spellings are funny.
Over the years, I think one of the challenges of our artists and entrepreneurs in general has been our inability to see beyond Ghana as a market. But the market in our globalised world is at least, West Africa, if not Africa and the world at large. Tell me, where outside Ghana can you promote a song like “Okraman Funu Ba” to an international audience?
In this age when technology has advanced and most societies are moving forward, we are still allowing the things which held our forefathers back to affect us. How can we build a vibrant and positive society when our music is mostly melancholic with hard work being seen as suffering and our movies are all about witchcraft and superstition? If we really want to develop as a people then we cannot leave such an important institution like the movie industry to the dictates of demand and supply and greedy entrepreneurs whose only motive is to smile to the bank, damn all of us.
This is even more so in a society where more than half of the population are not literate . A large number of the populace seem gullible as far as these things are concerned.
Governments exist not only for the physical security of the citizenry but also their psychological security. I think the government should come in to ensure some sanity in the movie industry, and move fast. Will that constitute censorship? Then who will sanitise the movie industry?
Writer’s email: aamakai@hotmail.com
Almost on a daily basis, Ghanaian producers are coming out with what they want us to believe are movies. Just watching the excerpts of these movies as adverts on our television sets tells us what to expect and watching them confirms it.
Almost all of them are about witchcraft, sex, insults, profanity, occultism and wickedness; sometimes for no reason. It is either a mother-in-law dislikes her daughter-in-law so much that she continuously destroys the babies in her womb or someone disliking another person so much that he puts poison in his food to cause death or spiritually gives him an “everlasting sore”.
One of these movies recently released is a combination of little parts of several western movies. I could simply not believe my eyes! What happened to originality? A person gets assaulted or even murdered in these movies and the Police is nowhere in sight. A child is physically or mentally abused in this modern day and all the movie makes us believe is that it will take a ghost to stop the abuse. And by the time this ghost appears too much harm has been done!
This trend is indeed worrisome. It is worrisome because the arts are one of the most powerful tools that shape the consciousness of any society. It mobilises people for national development in the direction they want to go as a people. Is this really the way we want to go? Watch an American movie and you are inspired by the roles played by those representing Americans in these movies. They are always the strong and strong-willed, smartest, determined and witty. The Indians display their dancing and singing skills and tell their stories without going obscene even if the sound which follows their blows is too loud for a human being to possibly survive!
In contrast, our movies are so steeped in spiritualism, occultism and outright profanity to the extent of losing reason. Is it, therefore, surprising that we still have people who will bypass the health facility and head for the shrine at the slightest headache and still be surrounded by filth and be surprised that cholera is killing us? When science has proven that it is filth and the eating of faecal matter that causes cholera and headaches are no strange diseases in the hospital?
Usually, there is no clear-cut story line, plot or any moral lessons to be learnt from these movies and they seem to go on and on and on with no substance. It is as if the actors go on location to decide what to do and once it is recorded, there is no review or editing. Even the entertainment value of these movies is questionable as witchcraft and the powers of the underworld are continuously hyped. We don’t even have an image of our own sasabonsam but the computer generated images of creatures we find in Sinbad.
The titles of most of these movies indicate that the producers never have any international audience in mind. Examples are Animguasie, Bantama Aware, King Kong, Eno Samanpa, Heaven Akwantuo, Nsohwe mu Nsohwe and Nebuchadnezzar. Most of them have no less than two parts with some, like Kyeiwaa, running into many parts . It leaves one wondering whether those movies go through any scrutiny at all.
Even in the days of old when technology was less advanced, we used what we had to entertain and educate ourselves as a people. We could learn practical lessons from watching Osofo Dadzie, Obra and a few others and also entertain ourselves, even if they were on black and white screens. Why not now? We are too busy copying others that we now see Ghanaians dressed in lace with big headgear in the kitchen or just relaxing at home. But that is not real, for you and I know that Ghanaian women hardly dress like that at home! Even the Nigerians whom we may be copying are gradually discarding those kind of movies which we are busily embracing now. If they were giving the kind of titles we are giving now, I doubt if they could have broken into our market. A movie is set in a pre–colonial era , in some forest yet you find an actress wearing clothes made from jute (kotoku), but wearing acrylic nails!
Tell me what will attract a Nigerian or a Sierra-Leonean or a South African to watch a movie titled Bantama Aware. Even when we attempt to give English subtitles to these movies it is a great struggle; the translated English is so bad grammatically, and the spellings are funny.
Over the years, I think one of the challenges of our artists and entrepreneurs in general has been our inability to see beyond Ghana as a market. But the market in our globalised world is at least, West Africa, if not Africa and the world at large. Tell me, where outside Ghana can you promote a song like “Okraman Funu Ba” to an international audience?
In this age when technology has advanced and most societies are moving forward, we are still allowing the things which held our forefathers back to affect us. How can we build a vibrant and positive society when our music is mostly melancholic with hard work being seen as suffering and our movies are all about witchcraft and superstition? If we really want to develop as a people then we cannot leave such an important institution like the movie industry to the dictates of demand and supply and greedy entrepreneurs whose only motive is to smile to the bank, damn all of us.
This is even more so in a society where more than half of the population are not literate . A large number of the populace seem gullible as far as these things are concerned.
Governments exist not only for the physical security of the citizenry but also their psychological security. I think the government should come in to ensure some sanity in the movie industry, and move fast. Will that constitute censorship? Then who will sanitise the movie industry?
Writer’s email: aamakai@hotmail.com
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Has Memuna a family?
Asks Doreen Hammond
THE story in the Daily Graphic of Thursday April 21, 2011 was sad and surprising. It was reported that a mother of a ten year old in Sefwi –Tantrim in the Western Region had held her daughter’s head in water until she died.
According to the police, the mother, Memuna Salam, held the legs of her daughter, Isha, and forcibly plunged her head into a container she had already filled with water until the girl was lifeless.
In January last year, Ghanaians were faced with a very similar incident. A 31-year-old woman, Georgina Pipson, killed all her five children through food poisoning. The matter d id not end there, for Georgina took her own life. The public outcry was great but after several discussions in the media the matter went to rest. Georgina was also a mentally ill patient who had relapsed. And who were to bear the fatal brunt but Georgina’s own five children .
The Psychiatric Hospital is not a place where the mentally ill are kept forever. It is a place where the mentally ill receive treatment and return to their family just like malaria patients would. But often times, people see the mentally ill as dangerous and troublesome, they go begging the doctors at the psychiatric hospitals to keep them there indefinitely.
Other family members go to the extent of leaving their mentally ill patients in the hospital deliberately giving wrong contact details; the reason for this is obvious— they would never come back for their own even if he/she gets better and they don’t want to be traced.
Worse still, some will just dump their mentally ill at the gates of the psychiatric hospital, look left, right and left again and disappear.
The reasons for this situation vary including the reason that some families are too concerned about the stigmatisation associated with mental illness and would therefore not want it known that one of their own is mentally ill. They are therefore too ready to abandon them.
Recently, a number of inmates of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital who had been cured of their mental illnesses were faced with forced ejection from the hospital.
The Chief Psychiatrist, Dr Akwasi Osei, said the inmates had all been declared fully recovered and discharged from the hospital but they had refused to leave and make way for other patients.
The hospital, however, arranged transport and other logistics and managed to send some of the patients to their homes.
Why would patients on admission who have recovered refuse to go back to their family? Could it have been the fear of neglect and stigmatisation by their own families? Something is definitely wrong somewhere because other patients on admission in some hospitals look forward to going home— Home sweet home.
The story of Memuna raises some issues. The questions that readily come to mind are : Was there nobody at all around when she dipped her daughter’s head in water until she died? Especially when it was no secret that she had a record of two similar acts that had earlier taken away the lives of two other children? Who was concerned about whether Memuna followed up on her treatment at the Psychiatric Hospital or not? Where is Isha’s father and what are his responsibilities to his daughter? Did the family members of Memuna provide her with the obvious support she needed as a mentally ill patient by ensuring that she took her medications? And why did they leave the care of her daughter solely in her hands?
I would not go into the relationship between crime and mental disorders; that was done extensively by the experts when Georgina Pipson did the unthinkable. I would not go into the issues of social welfare and children’s homes where one would think Memuna’s daughter would have been safer. This is because we are all aware of the challenges these institutions face with facilities, finances and staff. The case of the Osu Children’s home got so much publicity recently for all the bad reasons. But how about the family? Does Memuna have a family? Where is Isha’s father and what is his responsibility to his daughter ?
The two cases of Georgina and Memuna have brought to light once more the indication that we are not doing too well with being our neighbour’s keeper and that the extended family support system is gradually breaking down.
Everybody seems so busy these days chasing money that the very values we used to cherish, looking out for one another is getting lost. In an extended family system, not all members are able to join the chase for money ( Not by choice though). Some stayed at home while others went but their role was appreciated by the haves taking care of the have nots. Some found themselves at home and they looked after people like Memuna.
Interestingly, the family system is very active when the ultimate happens—death. You get to see the Abusuapanyin issuing instructions as to his likes and dislikes based not on principles but his interests! Members surface in full regalia to give instructions as to how the funeral must be organised. They start apportioning blame to anyone but themselves! In most cases the sole interest is how to benefit from the death and to gain cheap popularity.
Out of neglect, innocent children have lost their lives. Why can’t we go back to the era where the family served as an institution for emotional and financial support? Where family members are each others keeper. If that is becoming impossible because of the difficult economic times then now is the time to strengthen the institutions that cater for the welfare society— Institutions that protect the child. No more children should suffer what Memuna and Georgina’s children have suffered!
Writer’s email : aamakai@hotmail.com
THE story in the Daily Graphic of Thursday April 21, 2011 was sad and surprising. It was reported that a mother of a ten year old in Sefwi –Tantrim in the Western Region had held her daughter’s head in water until she died.
According to the police, the mother, Memuna Salam, held the legs of her daughter, Isha, and forcibly plunged her head into a container she had already filled with water until the girl was lifeless.
In January last year, Ghanaians were faced with a very similar incident. A 31-year-old woman, Georgina Pipson, killed all her five children through food poisoning. The matter d id not end there, for Georgina took her own life. The public outcry was great but after several discussions in the media the matter went to rest. Georgina was also a mentally ill patient who had relapsed. And who were to bear the fatal brunt but Georgina’s own five children .
The Psychiatric Hospital is not a place where the mentally ill are kept forever. It is a place where the mentally ill receive treatment and return to their family just like malaria patients would. But often times, people see the mentally ill as dangerous and troublesome, they go begging the doctors at the psychiatric hospitals to keep them there indefinitely.
Other family members go to the extent of leaving their mentally ill patients in the hospital deliberately giving wrong contact details; the reason for this is obvious— they would never come back for their own even if he/she gets better and they don’t want to be traced.
Worse still, some will just dump their mentally ill at the gates of the psychiatric hospital, look left, right and left again and disappear.
The reasons for this situation vary including the reason that some families are too concerned about the stigmatisation associated with mental illness and would therefore not want it known that one of their own is mentally ill. They are therefore too ready to abandon them.
Recently, a number of inmates of the Accra Psychiatric Hospital who had been cured of their mental illnesses were faced with forced ejection from the hospital.
The Chief Psychiatrist, Dr Akwasi Osei, said the inmates had all been declared fully recovered and discharged from the hospital but they had refused to leave and make way for other patients.
The hospital, however, arranged transport and other logistics and managed to send some of the patients to their homes.
Why would patients on admission who have recovered refuse to go back to their family? Could it have been the fear of neglect and stigmatisation by their own families? Something is definitely wrong somewhere because other patients on admission in some hospitals look forward to going home— Home sweet home.
The story of Memuna raises some issues. The questions that readily come to mind are : Was there nobody at all around when she dipped her daughter’s head in water until she died? Especially when it was no secret that she had a record of two similar acts that had earlier taken away the lives of two other children? Who was concerned about whether Memuna followed up on her treatment at the Psychiatric Hospital or not? Where is Isha’s father and what are his responsibilities to his daughter? Did the family members of Memuna provide her with the obvious support she needed as a mentally ill patient by ensuring that she took her medications? And why did they leave the care of her daughter solely in her hands?
I would not go into the relationship between crime and mental disorders; that was done extensively by the experts when Georgina Pipson did the unthinkable. I would not go into the issues of social welfare and children’s homes where one would think Memuna’s daughter would have been safer. This is because we are all aware of the challenges these institutions face with facilities, finances and staff. The case of the Osu Children’s home got so much publicity recently for all the bad reasons. But how about the family? Does Memuna have a family? Where is Isha’s father and what is his responsibility to his daughter ?
The two cases of Georgina and Memuna have brought to light once more the indication that we are not doing too well with being our neighbour’s keeper and that the extended family support system is gradually breaking down.
Everybody seems so busy these days chasing money that the very values we used to cherish, looking out for one another is getting lost. In an extended family system, not all members are able to join the chase for money ( Not by choice though). Some stayed at home while others went but their role was appreciated by the haves taking care of the have nots. Some found themselves at home and they looked after people like Memuna.
Interestingly, the family system is very active when the ultimate happens—death. You get to see the Abusuapanyin issuing instructions as to his likes and dislikes based not on principles but his interests! Members surface in full regalia to give instructions as to how the funeral must be organised. They start apportioning blame to anyone but themselves! In most cases the sole interest is how to benefit from the death and to gain cheap popularity.
Out of neglect, innocent children have lost their lives. Why can’t we go back to the era where the family served as an institution for emotional and financial support? Where family members are each others keeper. If that is becoming impossible because of the difficult economic times then now is the time to strengthen the institutions that cater for the welfare society— Institutions that protect the child. No more children should suffer what Memuna and Georgina’s children have suffered!
Writer’s email : aamakai@hotmail.com
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
CHANGING WITH THE TIMES
By Doreen Hammond
THE immediate past boss of the Ghana Broadcasting corporation (GBC) has revealed how he had to contain ‘stale’ workers who had outlived their usefulness in the organisation. Though we may see this as the cries of a drowning man, this may be bigger than we think for it is a problem that transcends the GBC and is common in many organisations.
The world is dynamic and so things keep changing by the day if not by the minute and we risk becoming redundant if we do not continuously update ourselves in whatever enterprise we find ourselves .
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the practice in our part of the world. And so we have some university professors still teaching 1930 theories to students, some doctors prescribing treatments scrapped off since the Second World War and typists who have not been able to migrate to the use of the computer over the period.
For instance, a modern day journalist should be able to file his story, take pictures and run a voice over where necessary as against the olden days where these functions would have been performed by three or four people. So we have the Christiana Ampours with a minimum of crew beaming news to the whole world while in our setting we will use a whole platoon to do that . Just look at the long list of names that appear after a short programme on our television screens.
The situation is even worse in the informal sector where for the lack of any meaningful continuous assessment, people graduate into certain vocations and never upgrade themselves.
Take the average mason, carpenter or plumber for instance; apart from having acquired his training on the side lines ; say from his “master” by apprenticeship and graduated without any test of his proficiency, he may never attend any upgrading course throughout his professional career and thus as new technology and tools are introduced, he stubbornly sticks to the old ways until he becomes irrelevant and sometimes even a danger to clients. Have you ever had an item of yours destroyed instead of repaired by any of these artisans? And who paid for the cost of the destruction of your property which was supposed to have been repaired?
The petrified face of a plumber who could not fix my water closet is still so vivid to me. It took another plumber barely an hour to do what this other plumber said could never be done. The relationship between that plumber and I now? Of course your guess is as good as mine, that was the last time I called him to do any work for me.
When automobile technology changed from back axle to front wheel drive, most of our mechanics refused to move with the tide, claiming that the former was better, even after the owners of the technology had through research come out with what had been acclaimed an improvement. The same happened with the change in technology from the carburettor to the injector systems. Since we don't manufacture cars and the manufacturers had settled on the new technology, we had to tow their line or risk getting out of business. With time when the manufacturers of back axle cars and carburettor engines stopped manufacturing such cars, some of these mechanics lost their entire clientele and relocated to Kokompe where they are doing all sorts of things to earn a living now.
So you send a vehicle to the mechanic because the brake lights won’t go off ? The answer is simple, he removes the bulb! Problem solved!
I remember a visit to the Tema DVLA offices early 2000 where I met a white man who looked baffled and perplexed. The gentleman had come to trace the documents on a vehicle he had purchased and had had to pay money for the search to be conducted. His surprise obviously was not about paying for the search, but the fact that the one searching had to virtually ‘swim’ through a garage full of old files covered with dust and cobwebs and smelling of decay.
After three and half hours, the poor “searcher”, drenched in sweat and decay appeared with the file gasping for breath but beaming with a triumphant smile for performing what to him was a miracle! The white man's consternation might have stemmed from the fact that he expected the information to be available to him by a click of the mouse. The reality is that, it is not only at the DVLA offices that such old and archaic practices are found. It cuts across most public and private organisations.
With the introduction of the computer, one would have expected that we would have tapped into its full uses, including storage of data. Regrettably, what we have been able to do so far, is to replace the type writer with the computer.
The bottom line is that organisations must identify the most effective and modern ways of going about their businesses and eschew bureaucracy. Such action could help us make some savings.
In a similar way, we as individuals , must make the needed efforts to be abreast of the latest ways of doing our jobs. The organisations for which we work could meet us half way by continuously creating the necessary environment for learning and organising training courses in order that we upgrade our skills .
Failure to do this and we risk becoming the ‘Suegbe’ that the legendary Nigerian Musician, Fela Ransom Kuti, sang about. A tailor sewing like a carpenter!!
Writer’s e-mail : aamakai@hotmail.com
THE immediate past boss of the Ghana Broadcasting corporation (GBC) has revealed how he had to contain ‘stale’ workers who had outlived their usefulness in the organisation. Though we may see this as the cries of a drowning man, this may be bigger than we think for it is a problem that transcends the GBC and is common in many organisations.
The world is dynamic and so things keep changing by the day if not by the minute and we risk becoming redundant if we do not continuously update ourselves in whatever enterprise we find ourselves .
Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the practice in our part of the world. And so we have some university professors still teaching 1930 theories to students, some doctors prescribing treatments scrapped off since the Second World War and typists who have not been able to migrate to the use of the computer over the period.
For instance, a modern day journalist should be able to file his story, take pictures and run a voice over where necessary as against the olden days where these functions would have been performed by three or four people. So we have the Christiana Ampours with a minimum of crew beaming news to the whole world while in our setting we will use a whole platoon to do that . Just look at the long list of names that appear after a short programme on our television screens.
The situation is even worse in the informal sector where for the lack of any meaningful continuous assessment, people graduate into certain vocations and never upgrade themselves.
Take the average mason, carpenter or plumber for instance; apart from having acquired his training on the side lines ; say from his “master” by apprenticeship and graduated without any test of his proficiency, he may never attend any upgrading course throughout his professional career and thus as new technology and tools are introduced, he stubbornly sticks to the old ways until he becomes irrelevant and sometimes even a danger to clients. Have you ever had an item of yours destroyed instead of repaired by any of these artisans? And who paid for the cost of the destruction of your property which was supposed to have been repaired?
The petrified face of a plumber who could not fix my water closet is still so vivid to me. It took another plumber barely an hour to do what this other plumber said could never be done. The relationship between that plumber and I now? Of course your guess is as good as mine, that was the last time I called him to do any work for me.
When automobile technology changed from back axle to front wheel drive, most of our mechanics refused to move with the tide, claiming that the former was better, even after the owners of the technology had through research come out with what had been acclaimed an improvement. The same happened with the change in technology from the carburettor to the injector systems. Since we don't manufacture cars and the manufacturers had settled on the new technology, we had to tow their line or risk getting out of business. With time when the manufacturers of back axle cars and carburettor engines stopped manufacturing such cars, some of these mechanics lost their entire clientele and relocated to Kokompe where they are doing all sorts of things to earn a living now.
So you send a vehicle to the mechanic because the brake lights won’t go off ? The answer is simple, he removes the bulb! Problem solved!
I remember a visit to the Tema DVLA offices early 2000 where I met a white man who looked baffled and perplexed. The gentleman had come to trace the documents on a vehicle he had purchased and had had to pay money for the search to be conducted. His surprise obviously was not about paying for the search, but the fact that the one searching had to virtually ‘swim’ through a garage full of old files covered with dust and cobwebs and smelling of decay.
After three and half hours, the poor “searcher”, drenched in sweat and decay appeared with the file gasping for breath but beaming with a triumphant smile for performing what to him was a miracle! The white man's consternation might have stemmed from the fact that he expected the information to be available to him by a click of the mouse. The reality is that, it is not only at the DVLA offices that such old and archaic practices are found. It cuts across most public and private organisations.
With the introduction of the computer, one would have expected that we would have tapped into its full uses, including storage of data. Regrettably, what we have been able to do so far, is to replace the type writer with the computer.
The bottom line is that organisations must identify the most effective and modern ways of going about their businesses and eschew bureaucracy. Such action could help us make some savings.
In a similar way, we as individuals , must make the needed efforts to be abreast of the latest ways of doing our jobs. The organisations for which we work could meet us half way by continuously creating the necessary environment for learning and organising training courses in order that we upgrade our skills .
Failure to do this and we risk becoming the ‘Suegbe’ that the legendary Nigerian Musician, Fela Ransom Kuti, sang about. A tailor sewing like a carpenter!!
Writer’s e-mail : aamakai@hotmail.com
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