Privatise Korle Bu

THE Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH), Ghana’s foremost referral hospital, is now a far cry from what is expected of such a facility, nearly 90 years after its establishment.
With an average attendance of about 1,500 patients at its Outpatient’s Department (OPD) and 150 admissions daily, the hospital has to struggle to adequately care for its patients.
To enhance the capacity of the hospital to deal with its challenges, the Chief Executive Officer, Professor Nii Otu Nartey, has advocated that the hospital be allowed to run more like a private institution in order to raise the necessary funds to make the hospital more efficient.
He said although the government paid the salaries of the members of staff, payment for services under the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) and payments made by patients for consumables were inadequate, causing the hospital to continuously run at a loss.
The Daily Graphic visited the hospital on Thursday to acquaint itself with the challenges and achievements of the health facility in the face of continuous public complaints over its services.
The facility is the third largest hospital in Africa and the leading referral centre in Ghana.
It has been grappling with obsolete equipment or the unavailability of it because the old ones have given way and but not been replaced. For instance, there have been periods when there were no operating theatre tables, ventilators, suction machines, monitors and anaesthetic machines.
In addition, reports have been made about the erratic supply of electricity and water. Inadequate staff numbers to do the job are also a problem.
At the Accident Centre, patients were seen being given infusion as they sat in chairs. Others were being treated at the area around the nurses’ table because there were no beds. The same situation was observed at the Surgical Medical Emergency Centre, where some patients had to lie on benches.
Clearly, the centre had seen no rehabilitation in a long while. The few beds there had no sheets and patients who came without any slept on mattresses. The washroom was a sorry sight and if we still went by the science books, then passing infection from one patient to another was possible.
In addition to all these, patients and the members of staff had to deal with heat at the centre.
Some relatives of patients on admission were seen sprawled on card boards outside the gates of the centre because they had to stay around to run errands such as getting prescribed medications for the patients they had brought.
The situation at these two centres was pathetic.
At the Laundry Department, things were not going the way they should because of the lack of certain equipment, making operations manual.
Madam Naomi Hammond, the Head of the department, told the Daily Graphic that the laundry had three washers and two dryers which were not functioning properly.
There were no flat work ironers, forcing workers to report to work as early as 5 a.m. to iron manually in order to meet the demands of the hospital, especially linen from the theatres which had to be sent for sterilisation at a particular time.
In order to function more efficiently, Madam Hammond said the department would need six tumble dryers, eight washers and other equipment, saying that the situation now was not the best, especially when it rained.
The Childrens’ Block, with beds meant for15 children, was catering for 60 children at the time of the visit because a number of them slept on one bed as a matter of necessity. The possibility of passing on infection in such situation was very high.
To address some of the challenges, Prof Nartey was of the view that if the hospital was run like a private one, doctors, nurses and other members of staff could be paid more and thereby reduce the incidence of brain drain.
According to him, that would make doctors and other members of staff more dedicated to their patients “because they will know that if they don’t, they will lose money”.
Although he admitted that health services were more for social good, making the charging of commercial rates difficult, “that is the way we would need to finally go, in addition to a change in attitude towards work”.
Prof Nartey said he had been walking a tight rope in managing the hospital for the past four years because “you rebuke a doctor for wrongdoing and the doctors gang up against you”.
That, he said, made it difficult to deal with issues and that had led to some of the challenges the hospital was currently facing.
He described the future of the hospital as “great”, saying it was making great strides with time and gave a recent case of kidney transplant and another scheduled for April as some of the strides.
The chief executive said somehow the hospital was neglected in the past when it came to the allocation of funds from the government because of an erroneous notion that Korle-Bu could take care of itself.
That, however, changed for the better from 2008, he said.
The Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital, which opened on October 9, 1923, has grown from a 200-bed capacity facility to 2,000 now.
Presently, the hospital sees an average of 1,500 patients a day at its Outpatients Department (OPD), about 150 of who are admitted.
An increase in population, however, and the refusal of most patients to use it as a referral/specialist hospital, not a general one, has rendered it frequently crowded.
According to Prof Nartey, “the argument of most patients had been: ‘Why should I go to the polyclinic when I will be eventually referred to Korle-Bu? I will go there straight’. So they come with even malaria, which could be treated at the polyclinics”.
Often patients complain about long waiting time for consultation and other services.
To that complaint, Prof Nartey responded that the hospital had set up a complaints desk to address those issues but most patients would rather not want to be mentioned in connection with any complaint, making it difficult to follow up.
He added that patients would often arrive at the hospital as early as 5.30 a.m., irrespective of the fact that the clinic they were attending started at 9 a.m., and became very irritated when doctors had to go on ward rounds before attending to them.
He thought if an efficient appointment system was run, waiting time could be reduced but it seemed the Ghanaian believed more in the “first come, first served service”.
That gloomy picture of the Korle-Bu, however, is about to change because a number of projects have been completed and new ones begun.
According to Mr Mustapha Salifu, the Public Relations Officer of the hospital, the state of affairs at the Children’s Block was to change with the construction of a temporary emergency centre for children in the block.
The laundry is also to see a rehabilitation with the necessary equipment provided. All 13 lifts which were broken down, including those at the Maternity Block which resulted in women in labour being carried manually up the stairs, have been replaced at a cost of GH¢2.4 million.
There has been an expansion of water storage facilties to reduce frequency of the water shortages in the hospital which hitherto led to postponement of surgical operations and the hospital now has three generators which ensures continuous power supply to the hospital.
A Reproductive Health Centre has been constructed and there are a number of rehabilitation projects, including that of the surgical ground floor theatres for renal transplants and neurological procedures.
Last year, Parliament approved $250 million for the purchase of equipment for a number of public hospitals. Out of that amount, about $100 million is for the benefit of Korle-Bu.
Prominent members of the Ghanaian society, such as former President John Agyekum Kufuor and Rev Father Campbell, have recently been very impressed by the way they were treated at the hospital.
Perhaps with these improvements, the ordinary man may also have the same story to tell about Korle-Bu, the country’s flagship hospital.

Training our children the right way

By Doreen Hammond
SITTING in the living room with his children, daddy opened his spark plugs so loud, to the amusement of the children. They tried to hold their laughter, turning it into a giggle and then they burst out into uncontrollable laughter!
But this was not the first time daddy had done this, and the reaction of the children had almost always been same. This state of affairs was persistent and had become a game at home.
And then one day, colleagues from daddy’s office visited. As they were chatting about the increase in fuel prices and how to cope with the situation, Kwaku, the youngest of the children, raced into their midst and let out a salvo louder than daddy had ever heard in his life. The child then followed it with laughter, to the embarrassment of everybody in the living room. In the Ghanaian culture, it is not acceptable to break wind in the midst of others.
When the visitors left, daddy expressed great anger at Kwaku’s behaviour and mother followed it up with two lashes for Kwaku. Kwaku was very surprised because what he had done was normal practice at home and wondered why he should be punished when the same thing was daddy’s pastime. His siblings were equally confused.
At the British Council Hall where a spelling competition was being held, children took their seats at 8.30a.m, the time organisers said the programme would start.
When parents and other adults arrived late at 10a.m when the programme had began, the organisers asked the children to stand behind the hall so the adults could sit. The adults who had arrived at the programme a whole hour and half late were comfortably seated while the children who did the right thing by coming on time had to stand throughout the programme.
And then in a queue for kelewele, a child had been waiting his turn for almost 30 minutes. It seemed he would not be served any time soon because any adult who came to buy passed him by to get his. It was not strange to the child though because persistently, that had been his experience with adults everywhere he went and a little complaint to catch attention resulted in the retort, “ Hey, don’t you respect?”.
The plight of the child is not any better in the classroom setting. In a first aid class, the teacher taught the children that if bitten on the leg by a snake, something like a piece of cloth or a tie could be used to tie the part above the bite to stop the blood from circulating to the other parts of the body and by so doing prevent poison from circulating.
One of the pupils asked the teacher where to tie if the snake bite was on the neck. This question, which the teacher had no answer to, earned the child six lashes of the cane for asking a “stupid question” though in truth a snake bite may not necessarily be on the leg. It is not the habit of most adults to accept, in the presence of a child, that they do not know something and would, therefore, attempt to find out. In reality, do adults know everything under the sun?
I often hear parents and other adults talking about how children these days don’t respect and ask questions they would never have dared ask in their time.
What these complainants have failed to realise is that those times are past and may never come again and respect is not only a reciprocal thing but something that is also earned. Added to this, our stage of civilisation and development have culminated in children with curious minds. They not only want to know what is but why things are the way they are and what they are likely to become.
The days when parents just took any decision for their children without any form of consultation is in the past. Children these days would want to make an input into what affects them, even to the extent of determining what they wear.
They see you dressed up and the question you are likely to face is: Where are you going? Yes, they need to know where you are just like you need to know where they are and what is wrong with that?
By our very conduct as adults and role models for children in society, we have succeeded in teaching children so many unacceptable attitudes and behaviour and turned around to complain when the children have done the same things that they have seen us do and say what they have heard us say.
Take the parent who persistently asks his child to tell visitors he is out of town while he hides in his room, for instance, and tell me why he should be upset when his child tells a lie. Same point.
Dr Benedictus Wozuame, a clinical psychologist, psycho-therapist and medical doctor at the Pantang Hospital, describes the formative years of children, especially between 12 and 18, as critical to the habits and behaviour they form.
He says that by age 18, the behaviour of man would have been formed and it becomes difficult to change.
Dr Wozuame explains that the behaviour of adults in the home setting is likely to be learnt by children in that home if that behaviour is persistent.
“Our children often imitate how we talk, eat, shout; almost everything we do at home, therefore, we as adults should behave well so they copy the right things”, he said.
This means that the persistent behaviour of adults in the home setting could influence the behaviour of children as they grow into adults.
It is difficult to understand why adults would always turn round to complain about the behaviour of children when they do not act as good role models for them.
Why should the children who run around a lot, burn more calories and perform all the household chores be served with crumbs while the already overweight father is given the sumptuous portions of the meal?
Even though as humans we may have our own frailties, we should never forget that our children will do what they see us doing. We must, therefore, make a conscious effort to put our best foot forward so that they pick the best of our habits.
Writer’s e-mail: aamakai@hotmail.com

The ups and down of Valentine’s day

By Doreen Hammond
CHOCOLATES, flowers , teddy bears and the colour red, which symbolises love, dominates many parts of the city as February 14, Valentine’s day, approached.
Clothing shops dressed their mannequins in red and in One shop at Osu, a red pant adorned the frontage .
Shops which sell greeting cards and gifts are draped in red with banners advertising stocks meant for the day at attractive prices. The driving force may not be the intention to make sure Ghanaians share love but an economic one-- taking advantage of the day to make sales.There is absolutely nothing wrong with that; it is business. Or shall we say it is a matter of killing two birds with one stone? Making money and sharing love simultaneously?
Some seven years ago, Ghanaians, propelled by media hype, took the celebration of St Valentine’s day, which was not traditionally Ghanaian like Christmas , to a level never seen in this country . Many Ghanaians wore red, wine and white believed to be the colours of Valentine and made sure they bought a gift to share with a loved one. That was not strange because in today’s globalised world it becomes difficult to sit on an island touting what is exclusively Ghanaian. To a large extent, many ,especially the youth , see this Valentine love as a romantic one, between lovers and not between family members or just friends.
For most of our youth, the day was not for the single but the attached because something had to happen before the day was over.
Under trees, on beaches and dark alleys, the morning after Valentine was often a huge exhibition of used condoms. Thank God for condoms though, for the results of such misadventures could have been catastrophic. The day for some had to be necessarily marked with booze and jams.
Sending of carefully crafted text messages also characterises the day. In the attempt to send to all, males may end up sending love messages to males but that cannot be out of place because males need to be loved too and in Ghana today where homosexuality is struggling to make a strong statement , love messages to males will certainly not be strange.
Some of these messages have however brought tragedy rather than love and joy to some couples in the past. An incident which readily comes to mind is that of a soldier who was on duty at the Castle, Osu on February 14, 2005. He had seized his girlfriend’s cell phone the previous night to monitor calls and text messages out of suspicion and was outraged by what he saw. The result was that he shot his girlfriend, shot and killed his girlfriend’s friend and killed himself.
The Ghana Tourism Authority took advantage of the negativities that characterised the celebration of Valentine by launching a positive campaign to get the day more associated with chocolates, encouraging Ghanaians to buy and share chocolate since it was healthy, especially good for the heart.
Another institution, the Ministry of Education in collaboration with the Ghana Mathematics Society, in 2007, attempted to make it a day to create awareness for the importance of Mathematics and how to make its teaching and learning simple. This day was dubbed Maths day but it seems not to have caught on as widely as intended.
Over the past three years, the Valentine fever went down but seems to be rising high again this year with the preparations and atmosphere evident in the city.
Some churches would be organising programmes for the youth and preaching love.
Love is sharing, love is kind , love is patient, love is tolerant and forgiving , so go on, spread the love . Take advantage of the day to make your world better. Have a happy Valentine’s day.

How independent are Ghanaians after 55 years?

By Doreen Hammond


We would be heading again for the Independence Square on March 6, as part of activities to mark 55 years of the country’s independence. Similar activities will be held at the regional and district levels throughout the country.
As is statutorily the case, the day would be declared a public holiday and most Ghanaians would rejoice and be glad in it, especially workers who will have a day off from work.
Rightly so because this day marks the beginning of our journey into statehood and self determination after years of British colonial rule. A journey which took off at the Old Polo Grounds with Dr Kwame Nkrumah in the driving seat, surrounded by the indefatigable big six namely, Ebenezer Ako-Adjei, Emmanuel Obetsebi-Lamptey, Dr J. B. Danquah, Edward Akufo Addo and William Ofori Atta.
To all these gallant sons and daughters and others who cannot be mentioned, we salute you for your sacrifices in bringing us this far. It is in this regard that we share in the recent honouring of the Osagyefo by the AU with the mounting of his statue at the forecourt of the new AU headquarters in Adis-Ababa; an attestation to the saying that indeed, Nkrumah never dies.
Having said these, let us also use the occasion to do an assessment of our performance on the developmental journey. Such a reflection would afford us the space to determine how far we have come in the last 55 years, where we are going and how we intend to get there. As the saying goes, an unexamined life is not worth living.
In spite of our initial track record with military coup d’etats, Ghana is now touted as one of the few democratic countries on a continent rife with political and social upheavals. With comparatively peaceful, free and fair elections since 1992 and still counting, these achievements can be no fluke.
Ghanaians have also promoted freedom of expression as enshrined in our 1992 Constitution as a requisite for democracy. But to a large extent we have not backed this freedom of speech with the corresponding responsibility and this is quite worrisome. We have turned the many radio stations that have come into being into platforms for trading insults, and that is far from what democracy means.
Our economic indicators also seem to point at the right direction as inflation, GDP and growth are all said to be on course, though the reality, as far as our pockets are concerned, is different.
We are also not doing badly in general infrastructural build-up, especially in the areas of road, schools under trees and some health facilities in the rural areas.
The rule of law seems to be working to some appreciable extent, even if there is room for improvement. To a large extent also, we have managed to remain together as one people with a common sense of purpose and destiny. This should not detract from the fact that cronyism and ethnocentrism seem to be on the rise in recent times with some groups preferring to play the tribal or ethnic card at the expense of our collective good as a people.
Be that as it may, these and many more are achievements worthy of celebrating by any country.
Despite these achievements we still have a long way to go. If we were to do a dispassionate post-mortem and answer the question: how truly independent can we claim to be 55 years down the line, I’m sure the answer would be a mixed one and the reasons are not far fetched.
For instance, reports indicate that about half of the population of Ghanaians (51 per cent) do not have decent places of convenience. The Environmental Health and Sanitation Directorate (EHSD) of the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development recently made this known and explained that 12 million Ghanaians are forced to practise open defecation, which poses health hazards. While other countries may be building sophisticated war ships, nuclear plants and embarking on space expeditions, we are still grappling with the problem of where to empty our bowels after 55 years of nationhood. This is clearly an indictment on our collective selves as a nation and all efforts should be made to right this wrong. This is clearly not a mark of a mature state.
Fifty-five years down the line and we are not producing enough to feed ourselves. We import almost everything from snails to tomatoes. Our farming is still mainly subsistent and we depend on the hoe and cutlass and rain to water our crops.
We have not been able to develop and expand irrigation systems to control when we have crops in abundance and when we will not. Ours is that of seasonal farming and that is why we either have a glut on our market or a shortage. Even while we have tomatoes in abundance we have not been able to preserve them in tins, for example, and our market has been flooded with different kinds of tinned tomatoes from other countries. The effect of this state of affairs on our economy as relates to foreign exchange is obvious.
Fifty-five years down the line and we have not been able to institute educational policies that give clear directions as to where we want our children to go. We have reviewed a four-year senior high school duration to a three-year one without putting the necessary infrastructure in place to accommodate the policy.
As a result we watched on as our children were cramped like sardines in classrooms and dining halls turned into dormitories without the appropriate facilities. The children entered senior high school before we thought of building classrooms where they will sit to learn. What happened to planning? The ad hoc policies have translated into poor results across board.
Fifty-five years down the line and even the Surgical Medical Emergency Department of our last-stop hospital, Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, lacks the basic logistics and infrastructure that would ensure that a patient gets the best of care. Not because staff are not qualified but because the tools to work with are not available; even critical equipment like a theatre bed has become a challenge. Health care is still a nightmare with run-down facilities in most of our health facilities. What are we using our taxes for?
We have not been able to plan ahead to contain the numbers in our hospitals to the extent that once a patient is on admission, relatives would have to be at hand to provide nursing care, whether in the right or wrong way because nurses are inadequate to meet the workload.
Fifty-five years down the line and most of us have succeeded in throwing away our various Ghanaian languages which make us Ghanaian, preferring to speak only English and still give names that our colonial masters left for us to give our children; and we call ourselves independent?
How independent have we become when our youth continue to believe that success can only be achieved in another land and not our own?
Fifty-five years down the line and you will be surprised how many Ghanaians will race on board a ship docked at the port, ready to send people into any foreign land to do menial jobs.
Rail transport, which seems our best bet at easing the heavy traffic in the capital has eluded us. Promises of a railway line from Accra to Paga have turned out to be empty talk.
Forging ahead, we need to continue to take account of our strengths and weaknesses. We should continue to build on the things that unite us as a people and eschew all negative attitudes that would lead us onto the path of self-destruction.
Collectively and individually, we should always be guided by the words of one of our patriotic songs which says that “Others came and did their bit and it is now our turn to also build on”. The big question is: Are we building anything that would make posterity proud of us?
We should all resolve to work harder, be more patriotic and remain united as a people so that next year by this time we can give a more positive account of our stewardship. Ghanaians are in one ship called Ghana and if it sinks, we all sink together.

Who protects the househelp?

By Doreen Hammond
The recent story in the news about the molestation of a house help to the extent of burning her back with a hot pressing iron and breaking her legs was very pathetic.
It is not as if the plight of the house help has ever been good but this particular story of such inhumane treatment to someone whose job is to help the upkeep of home, defied human reasoning.
This 19 year old house help was said to have been locked in a toilet and brought out occasionally for further maltreatment. If this had happened in the days of Kunta Kinte in the film Roots, I could have believed it but in 21st century Ghana? Well, the Police are investigating and it will be interesting to know the outcome of the case.
The phenomenon of keeping house helps who used to be referred to as maidservants, maids or house girls is not a new one. It became very common when women began to take on multiple roles as home keepers, workers and breadwinners and started working outside their homes . With the gradual erosion of the extended family system which used to provide support for the nuclear family, the house help became a savior to most homes.
In addition to this , the present economic situation most families find themselves in has made the services of the house help even more necessary. The house helps take on the role of helping to care for children, washing, cooking, ironing and doing general household chores as mother and father leave their homes very early in the morning in search of money for the payment of school fees, high electricity bills, water, to buy food, clothes and pay for shelter.
In spite of the critical role house helps play in homes, their general conditions of service have remained poor. They don’t have much of a choice as to what to eat with some getting gari after pounding mounds of fufu or even sharing the meals of the dogs. To top it all up, house helps do not have the many liberties that the household enjoys yet they are expected to be the first to wake up and the last to go to bed irrespective of the fact that they have no proper sleeping places and they enjoy no medical cover.
From some village and with no idea about the people she has been brought to live with , the house help is supposed to quickly adjust , shirking off her initial psychological fear of the unknown and get down to duty.
The case of those who are old is much better than that of children who should be in school but have become house helps because of the difficult economic situations in their homes.
In the some homes their general appearance easily give them away for what they are—servants, in spite of the term house help that has been coined for them recently. Either they are wearing some over sized dresses, or you find them in an old kaba belonging to madam but with a different kind of skirt or slit which does not match. You could still argue that they are better of being in such clothes than the tattered ones they had in the village.
In verbal contracts signed with parents or their guardians, moneys may change hands but hardly is such money felt by the house help. The house help is the beast of burden. Promises of a better life and even education are often left at the very place they were made.
In homes where there are unscrupulous and henpecked masters with madams who seem a little bit on the heavy side , some of these house helps end up warming the beds of the master yet master still draws the whip at the slightest opportunity to avoid detection.

Though this situation seems to be changing, with some families putting house helps into trade and school after a stipulated period of service, how many house helps have such luck?
The country has seen the springing up of some agencies which recruit people to serve as house helps in homes. These agencies collect moneys for placing house helps not only from the employer but the house help too. She has to send a part of everything she earns to the agency. Here again it is the house help who gets fleeced of the little she makes from her toil and sweat.
These agencies give the semblance of a well organised institution. There are forms to be filled and contracts to be signed and passport pictures but the contract signed is no guarantee that a house help would stay with you till the expiration of that contract. These agencies claim to charge so much because they train the house help. But it is very difficult to tell what kind of training they get especially with house help brought from the village in the night and given away by morning.
These agencies are not able to guarantee the character of the house help because they do no background check of the house help they give away. In such cases the house help could leave the home with valuables and there will be no means to trace her.
The primary aim of these agencies therefore is not to provide service but to make moneys from both the house help and the one who hires her.
As humans, house helps cannot be said to be without their own short comings. Even with those who work on an agreed allowance, their whole attitude to work is as though they are doing a favour to their employer.
On a daily basis their duties have to be spelt out to them and they would always deliberately cut corners like sweeping only parts of a room they have been assigned to, breaking glasses and other kitchen equipment out of sheer carelessness and show a general lack of concern for items in the home because they don’t feel a part of it. Laziness and petty theft cannot be disassociated from them.
In even more serious cases, stories have been told of how house helps have abused children left in their care by even going to the extent of introducing them to sex.
Looking at the way things are going, house helps are going to be part of the family system for a very long time to come. It is a matter of demand and supply.
The industry of house helps and their working conditions cannot continue like this. If they are being hired to work, house helps must necessarily be of the age of consent, and there must be modalities and laws put in place and enforced to see to it that they are not exploited. They must also be made to understand that there are rules governing their work and they must provide the services they are being paid to provide.
At the end of the day it should be a win-win situation for the house help, the family and the agency.

The devil called PTA

By Doreen Hammond
It is difficult to put a date to when the slogan “Government cannot do it alone” began, but it seems to have come to stay and is being used by many state institutions as the reason why almost all sectors of our country are not running efficiently.
In the education sector, the slogan has translated into the formation of Parent –Teacher Associations (PTAs) in almost every basic and senior high school in the country.
It is equally difficult to trace when PTAs became part of our educational set up and who mooted an otherwise brilliant idea now turned into an instrument to fleece helpless parents. But my father tells me that when he was a student at Accra Academy in the fifties, this devil had not been conceived let alone born.
On the surface and as contained in many of the constitutions of these PTAs, they are to create and foster understanding and cooperation between parents / guardians and teachers in the training of their children.
These associations are supposed to facilitate the parental participation in the activities of the school for the benefit of the students. They are also to stimulate and maintain interest in the academic standards, sustain discipline and promote extracurricular activities. It also includes raising funds to support the development of the schools infrastructure.
Somehow these associations remain one that needs no registration to become a member and is not optional, once a child gains admission into a school, his parents or guardians become automatic members and that is why a parent could be penalised in the form of fines for not attending meetings. Even if a PTA meeting clashes with the burial of your mother, you are supposed to defer to the PTA or risk being fined for your absence!
Wonderful and well intentioned objectives they may look on paper but what have these PTAs been really up to in schools and how are they benefitting parents and students especially in public schools?
Discussions at these PTA meetings have been dominated by money. It has always been centred on collecting levies for everything from poly tanks to building classroom blocks, dormitories, teacher’s bungalows and even paying for chairs on which parents and teachers sit during such PTA meetings. The latest addition is electricity bills.
Apart from the Government approved fees for students / pupils in the case of public schools, parents at these meetings end up being cajoled into paying for so many things including what is termed “motivation” to teachers for doing the work they have been employed by the Ghana Education Service to do—teaching.
Even in private schools where the school is solely owned by a proprietor as a business entity, the PTAs are even more powerful. Parents are made to pay for all sorts of things including walls to fence the school even though they have no shares in the school.
Most meetings are hijacked by the cronies of the heads who are most often the chairmen of these associations to carry through the ideas of the heads, making believe that those ideas are those of parents.
For boarding schools, meetings are normally held on visiting days, a strategy to get parents to attend. Under duress, parents are made to sit through long hours of meetings while their minds are only centred on one thing—to see their children.
Apart from a few parents who question the impositions on parents, the rest sit and look on, for after all, question or no question it is the PTA chairman, the head of the school and the teachers who win. Sometimes something which is purported to be audited accounts are read out. In that state of mind all the parent wants to do is to get out of the room and see his/her child.
PTAs in some schools have become an avenue for some people to flaunt their wealth as these so called rich men keep proposing new projects without any consideration for the pocket of the less endowed parent.
When is enough supposed to be enough? Is the continuous existence of PTAs a statement on government’s inability to discharge what is clearly one of its constitutional requirements which is the provision of education? Why have successive governments not seen anything wrong with the excesses of PTAs? Let us say PTAs came about as a result of population growth but then what happened to planning to meet such growth?

The responsibility of education delivery in public schools should be that of Government and the role of the PTA should be purely supportive and voluntary, specifically ensuring the welfare of the child in the school.
The slogan of “Government cannot do it alone” is allowing Government to get away from its responsibilities of providing what the tax payers money is supposed to be used for.
So now we buy our own electricity poles, create our own water companies in our homes by digging our own bore holes, buy our own street lights, maintain the roads that lead to our communities and provide our own neighborhood security.
So what does the government provide for us to justify our continuous payment of taxes?
What happens to the many projects that parents contribute to building or providing after their children have left the schools when they are not shareholders of the school? No dividends?
The intention of running away from the high cost of private schools is often defeated by these associations which prefer to call themselves PTAs. Parents are already burdened with providing food, clothing and shelter for their children outside the school environment and their situation must not be compounded by the activities of these so called PTAs.
Certainly education is too important to be toyed with to the extent that even classroom blocks should be left on the shoulders of parents to build.
This trend of events must stop and PTAs must be called to order. They must be regulated in some way.
Alternatively, the government should come out openly to ask parents to pay for the facilities that they are unable to provide in the public schools. Payment for facilities which the Government is not providing “because the Government cannot do it alone” should be added officially to the school fees so that parents could plan and there will also be some transparency.
The PTA as it operates now is an otherwise brilliant idea that has been high jacked by a few to fleece already over burdened parents. This should not be allowed to go on. And that is why I could not help but agree with a parent who referred to it as the devil!

Food vendors and our health

By Doreen Hammond
I have not gone near my favourite, goat meat for days now. Goat khebab used to be a delicacy for me especially, when it is spiced with pepper, and that groundnut powder mix with slices of onions.
The smoke that usually engulfed me as I stood and pointed at those I wanted was never a deterrent. Neither the look of the sharp knife used by the seller to cut the meat up in pieces as I waited impatiently to put some in my mouth was nor the fact that the khebab seller touched my khebab with bare hands as he served me.
But alas, as the saying goes koloo ko ye dwaa mli ni moo oso , translated from Ga—there is an animal in the bush that catches the fox!
The floods which caused havoc to lives and property in Accra and specifically the Kwame Nkrumah Circle – Odawna areas on October 25 , also touched animals. When the storm was over, many sheep and goats lay dead. As people began to salvage the few things left and to dry out their clothes in every available space, brisk business started – big sheep and goat carcasses were sold for GH¢5 each.
There are many restaurants , chop bars and khebab joints around the Kwame Nkrumah Circle, specifically the Neoplan Station area, and though I cannot prove that the carcasses headed for these places, my imagination has been telling me so many things that is threatening my long time friendship with Khebab.
Not too long ago, I had to end a similar friendship with Hausa koko. I realised that the woman who stayed next door in an uncompleted house as a squatter, without access to potable water , no bath house and toilet was the same woman who sold the hausa koko by the road side—and she prepared the koko under terribly unhygienic conditions.
Unfortunately hers is not an isolated case. Day after day, new food vendors and hawkers appear in all parts of the city . They just put a table in the open or erect a small kiosk where they like and come out with fanciful inscriptions such as Okumtsola fast food and presto they are in business! They sell anything from fufu , banku, fried rice and chicken to waakye , and their patronage is huge.
In addition, fruit hawkers are readily available everywhere to sell. Sliced watermelons, pawpaws and pineapples are hawked in the streets and even on the sun in traffic. Sad thing is that some of these fruits are picked straight from the ground , are not washed and sliced with knives wiped but not cleaned with detergent and water.
The traffic in Accra makes it almost not practical for many workers to cook and take to work as some leave home as early as 4.30a.m.
It is a fact that many people do not cook at home but patronise restaurants , food and fruit vendors as a matter of convenience. How is the individual protected from diseases? How is the individual assured of safe food? How is this extended across the length and breadth of the country?
Who checks such food vendors whether in small or big restaurants or in the open? How many of these food vendors have the blessing of the Metropolitan and Public Health Department (MPHD) of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly to sell food?
In addition to this, the operations of most of these food joints have added up to the many illegal structures that litter many parts of Accra. Who is checking this worrisome situation?
The Director of the MPHD of the AMA, Dr S.A. Boateng says the department has found it difficult to determine the number of food vendors there are in the metropolis because “ today they are there as food vendors , tomorrow they are not”.
But according to figures given by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, (FAO), there are 65,000 food vendors in the Accra metropolis.
The department is therefore trying to target 85 per cent of an estimated 65,000 food vendors for health screening which is a mandatory requirement for food handlers/vendors in the metropolis.
The department’s environmental health officers are supposed to go round the metropolis checking food handlers for health certificates which they are given after going through health screening organised by the MPHD in collaboration with the Microbiology Department of the University of Ghana Medical School.
Hitherto, the MPHD allowed food handlers to do the required laboratory tests for worm infestation and typhoid fever at any laboratory of their choice but had to stop because it realised that some of the laboratories in the metropolis were substandard ( unqualified technicians and lack of reagents) and therefore issued unreliable laboratory results.
One of the challenges of the MPHD is that it has only 150 environmental officers to check food handlers when the department needs about 500 of them as recommended by the Ministry of Local Government. This has made the job of the MPHD quite difficult.
The World Health Organisation however recommends one environmental officer for every 700 people. The Accra metropolis has a population of five million people.
According to Dr Boateng, the department also has problems with mobility presented by the lack of transport for its work. He however suggests that some staff could be trained under the National Youth Employment Programme and the National |Service scheme to augment the staff of the MPHD.
For food hawkers like the army of them we see in the streets of Accra, especially in traffic hawking, Dr Boateng says the department does not screen them because it is against the bye-laws of the assembly to hawk food in the streets. The reality however is that these hawkers are on the streets selling and they may be transmitting all sorts of diseases to the innocent consumer. There is therefore the urgent need to either screen them or stop them!
Dr Sylvester Achio, Senior Lecturer, Department of Science Laboratory Technology of the Accra Polytechnic says the risk we stand by patronising foods prepared and sold under unhygienic conditions are many.
He said that apart from the germs/micro-organisms which are likely to settle on foods when exposed to the air and cause diseases, we also need to worry about foods prepared in unhygienic conditions because of dysentery, cholera and other stomach disorders.
He explained that food prepared and bought near stagnant debris or water, toilets and gutters or general insanitary conditions are likely to contain micro-organisms and faecal contaminants like E-Coli especially when the culture of hand washing is absent.
For fruits, Dr Achio explains that when exposed to heat without their outer coating, the biochemical reactions that take place cause faster spoilage because of microbial attacks. Therefore the person who eats such fruits is likely to have health problems.
Dr Achio strongly advocates that both food handlers and consumers maintain basic hygiene including hand washing and covering food and being very particular about the environment in which they cook and buy food from.
Food vendors are serving a very important role in society. They are a savior to many workers who do not have the opportunity of eating at home and give us an option when we do not want to enter the kitchen. We also get to entertain ourselves and socialise at some of these food joints. The government therefore needs to ensure that they do as more good than harm. The situation we have now, doesn’t bode well for our health.