Story: Stephen Sah
Ghana is one country where everything is taken for granted until a tragedy or something serious happens then we hurriedly take ad hoc measures to resolve the problem. However, like the proverbial scavenging bird, which promises to rebuild its nest after every heavy rainfall, we forget everything altogether until we are reawakened or struck by another tragedy.
For this kind of tendency Ghanaians are experts such that the alacrity with which we set up committees et al to handle situations and come up with plausible solutions the moment something happens is unmatched by any other country, to the best of my knowledge.
Just a few weeks ago, a major disaster was averted in Accra when a section of the Cocoa Affairs Courts near the National Lotteries collapsed, injuring two persons; one seriously.
Only God knows what would have happened if the incident had occurred during court session; everything would have been in disarray since our nurses and paramedics were on strike.
Immediately after the incident, the judiciary, led by the Chief Justice and some experts, visited the scene to assess the state of the buildings and the extent of damage. The incident has led to the disuse of some of the courts which have been relocated elsewhere in the city. This exercise has its own problem which is further exacerbated by the fact that some of the courts have to sit in the afternoon.
Many were those who blamed the near tragedy on the lack of maintenance culture of Ghanaians. There is no denying the fact that our attitude is not right yet the experts presented their report to the judicial authorities, as usual.
This article will not attempt a look at intricacies involved in this whole saga of court relocation since that has its problems which will be briefly addressed later. Its thrust is the dilapidated nature of the court infrastructure.
My investigations after the Cocoa Affairs incident revealed that apart from the main Supreme Court building and the cluster of court buildings there, the judiciary has no interest in the majority of the buildings it occupies and that since time immemorial the Service has been occupying these premises as a licensed tenant.
The service often takes charge of buildings provided by local authority administrations or palaces and other areas designated as such. It is obvious that these buildings are allowed to deteriorate because the service does not have the resources to undertake any maintenance or repairs.
A countless number of these buildings are being occupied on licence. These include the Cocoa Affairs Courts building which was originally not owned by the service. As the name suggests, it might have been put up for the administrators of the cocoa industry. So is the Greater Accra Regional Tribunal, which I am told, is owned by the Ghana Armed Forces; the Navy to be precise. These are areas where the courts are centred and one can locate the circuit and high courts here.
For the lower, community or magistrate courts, they are either located in a chief’s palace or a place which is not owned by the Judicial Service. Visits to the Osu, La, Accra Community Centre, Madina and Kaneshie magistrates’ courts reveals their awful states, if you asked me for a description of these court buildings. The odour which emanates from some of them coupled with the excessive heat is enough for one to fall sick.
Recently when I decided to go to the Kaneshie Magistrates’ Court, which is located within the Ga Mantse’s Palace I was told that the court had been relocated in the Regional Tribunal premises. I was told that the Ga chiefs needed the place for the funeral of their late king.
Probably they had planned the ejection long ago because of the lack of maintenance of the building and what an opportune time to eject them than during preparations towards the funeral of the paramount chief of the Gas?
If even under the very prying eyes of the authorities things have been allowed to go so bad then what is the situation in the rest of the country? A judicial staff official, when confronted with this issue was evasive but could only explain that it was the duty of every district or metropolitan assembly to see to the provision of community courts. “What about the other courts?” I asked.
Places that I have visited, such as my hometown, Sefwi Wiawso, Agona Swedru, Ewutu and others, in pursuit of my duty as a court reporter, have confirmed that the judiciary is not a landlord, at least in the majority of towns and cities across the country.
This was confirmed a couple of years ago when I attended the Chief Justice’s Forum where a very gloomy picture was painted of our court buildings during a picture slides show of some of our courts: some were located in noisy areas and even lacked basic facilities such as lavatory, chairs and lighting systems.
Accommodation for staff is an abomination and in one instance the house of a judge was leaking. What a sight we saw! The judge’s clothing hanging loosely somewhere near the bed. Anyway that livened up the seminar room because that provided a spontaneous infectious and uncontrollable laughter in the room.
Some lawyers I spoke to about the relocation of some courts and the shift system were not happy about the fact that some courts had to sit in the afternoon. To them that would deprive them of being in their chambers and attending to other issues or preparing for the next day's court.
Dr Kwaku Nsiah, a lawyer, said the centralisation of courts was not the best of options because every community was to have a magistrate, circuit and high courts. He said the current situation where all the courts were located at one place and everybody had to travel to the city centre to attend court sessions was not good because criminals could run away while being sent to the court. Furthermore, he said, the safety of dockets could not be guaranteed since they could easily get missing.
Another lawyer who declined to give his name, however, shared a different opinion and said the centralisation of the courts was advantageous except that the court buildings were not in good shape.
"Scattering the courts will be disastrous for both lawyers and clients. A client who does not have a lawyer can get one on entering the court complex. And for us lawyers our workload will be great in the sense that if I have different cases at different courts located elsewhere then it becomes difficult moving about", he said.
For Nii Akwei Thompson, also a lawyer, relocating the courts was problematic and action should be expedited so that afternoon sittings did not become the norm.
"The shift system should not be permanent but a temporary measure because we need the afternoon to attend to other matters", he said.
Mr Joseph Turkson, a lawyer, said the Judicial Service was experimenting with the decentralisation system whereby the courts are scattered but that system is plagued with problems. He said the current system should be maintained and beefed up with more judicial staff.
Maybe, the collapse of the Cocoa Affairs Courts building should be a clarion call for attention to be focused on the judiciary as the main dispenser of law and order in the society.
The infrastructure of the court aside, a serious diagnosis of its problems is urgent if we are serious about stopping the high turnover of its staff to attract the right calibre of staff, especially to the bench and nip in the bud the perceived corruption of the service for the public to have confidence in the administration of justice.
It has been said that a sound mind works in a healthy body so invariably if the judicial staff work under very deplorable conditions their overall output will be affected.
Justice delayed, they say, is justice denied. We should stop toying with the judiciary and be serious about doing something for the service if we want to make any headway in the current democratic dispensation.
I wonder if foreigners who visit the judiciary to learn from its exploits were taken round the various courts. It is obvious that they would have commended us in the face but send a bad image about us when they go back home.
We need to act to save the judiciary from its current mess and if for anything we cannot pay the staff well let us ensure that they work in very safe conditions. Without law and order our society cannot thrive for people to go about their everyday activities and there will be disorder.
Sunday, August 06, 2006
Need we run away from third world tag
By Stephen Sah
TWO inspiring statements relating to the current state in which the continent of Africa finds herself, which are attributed to two fine Ghanaian brains, as well as the reactions they generate, make interesting reading.
First, it was a Justice of the Court of Appeal, Mrs Henrietta Abban, who admonished Africans to reject the third world tag because it was debasing and intended by the richer countries to further exploit the continent.
The substance of her argument is that Africa has great potential and opportunities that the developed countries are interested in exploiting, if they can keep Africans perpetually inferior. The learned judge was reported to have urged Africans to not accept the third world tag, which connotes being second rate citizens (Daily Graphic, May 20, 2006).
Second, Mr Ishmael Yamson, the Chairman of the Council of the University of Ghana, also has stated that Africa does not have any excuse to be poor, since the continent is endowed with natural and human resources.
“We Africans should not be talking about poverty now because Africa has more natural resource than any other continent in the world and God has endowed the continent with people with brains”, he was reported as saying (Daily Graphic, May 22, 2006).
It is obvious from these two poignant statements that the destiny of Africa is in the hands of Africans ourselves and that it is only Africans who can redeem the African continent from this mentality.
But the learned judge’s admonition was beyond the point and the responses from Kojo Smith and my senior colleague, Kofi Akordor, go to fuel the situation. The fact is that the third world classification/taxonomy is not about capabilities/ abilities that make people in the third world inferior to any race in the world. Should we run way from the fact that we are a third world country? Should we not be ashamed that in spite of our enormous natural and human resources, our continent is the least developed in the world? The third world tag is about a state of affairs which we cannot run away from. It is and can never be about the capability or capacity of the people of Africa or other third world countries because there have been countless occasions that Africans, or to come home, Ghanaians, for that matter, as Kojo Smith wrote, have out-classed their counterparts from the so-called developed countries in various endeavours.
There is no qualms about the fact that poverty exists and some people are poor, while others are rich. This scenario applies to the classification of worlds into first (developed), second (developing) and third (least developed or developing) countries.
Adam Szirmai (2005) in “The Dynamics of Socio-economic Development” traces the genesis of the third world to after World War II, when the term came into vogue as a designation for developing countries. This third world was contrasted with the first world of the advanced capitalist countries and the second world of the industrialised socialist countries in Eastern Europe.
So, in effect, what this means is that in the third world countries development is nothing comparable to that of the advanced countries. Most of the third world could be found in the entire of Africa but Africa is not alone in this exclusivity - countries in Latin America and Asia are also inclusive of this category.
The patent or common characteristic and interest of these countries have to with the widening gap between them and the rest of the affluent industrialised world. The same is implied by such terms as “North” and “South” divide.
And these characteristics include the ineffective bureaucratic structures in operation, the inability to provide the basic necessities of life such as food, clothing and shelter, how to handle disease, epidemics and any natural disaster when they occur, impoverishment and malnutrition, poor health, illiteracy, living in environmentally degraded and filthy areas, little political voice and political participation and the lack of personal and political power.
This is not to say that these do not occur in the developed countries such as the USA, UK, Canada or France. They do but in those countries, the predictability of and attachment to these phenomenon are excellent, whilst the reverse is what prevails in the third world generally.
Should a natural disaster like an earthquake occur in Africa and the US, for instance, the difference will be the structures and institutions put in place to tackle the issue.
While the structures will be non-existent in the third world and for that matter Africa, they will be readily available in the US such that the impact of the disaster there will be minimal and might not be felt as much.
It is a truism that conditions of poverty are particularly desperate in Africa, for instance, where real income on the average is abysmal. The real income of the average American is more than 50 times that of the average person in sub-Saharan Africa and the amount of food that go to waste in the US can feed famished people in the world’s poorest countries like Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Somalia.
Therefore, what we must admit is that we are what we are just because the necessary structures to tackle the basic necessities of life to make things better for us as a people are lacking in our part of the world. However, if all of us have been graciously endowed with those resources or the same structures and institutions, the difference will not have to do with capacity or the thinking ability of us as a people. Maybe, we would do much better than people in advanced countries.
We need not hammer the classification and all that but rather critically look at how to ensure that this predicament does not ensnare us forever. Fortunately for us, we have made some gains, as far as ending the scourge of poverty is concerned. We are blessed with the enormous human and natural resources, as Mr Yamson rightly pointed out.
We are also aware of the basic facts about the predicament that faces us. This is supported by an anonymous poor man (a Ghanaian), who was quoted by Stephen C. Smith (2005) in his book “Ending Global Poverty” as saying that “ Poverty is like a heat: You cannot see it, you can only feel it; so to understand poverty, you have to go through it”. For me this is a strong indication of our awareness and a starting point of fighting the scourge.
The story of poverty so far is one of both good and bad news; the progress so far made and what remains to be done.
In spite of the enormous human and natural resource, we need to have visionary leaders, as Kofi Akordor rightly wrote, who will be transparent in their dealings and be accountable to the very people who put them at the helms of affairs Our leaders should let the people’s well-being be cardinal to their policies. Without good leadership to harness these resources, nothing better can happen in the lives of the people in the third word.
Our leaders should eschew parochial and selfish interests. They should fashion out policies that will not gag and suppress the people but make them active participants in the governance programme because suppression can breed revolution or conflict, which have become hallmarks of our part of the world.
Since most of the third world are emerging democracies, they need to nurture these paths with care and patriotism devoid of corruption. We should take advantage of globalisation and forge closer regional relations among ourselves. The existing regional barriers to free trade, movement of goods and people should give way to a common socio-economic and political ties to fight external hegemony.
Besides, education of the highest quality should be our priority and it is incumbent on our educational institutions to ensure that our people are provided with the best of education, which is not interested only in making graduates pass out of schools without benefiting the country. I mean practical education which develops critical and analytical minds for solving pressing societal problems.
Our educational institutions should encourage more researches from students and use some of these in lieu of written examinations which create the “chew, pour, pass and forget” syndrome. When a student conducts a research, he would always remember the substance of his studies more than the lecture notes he has to cram to pass an examination and forget everything thereafter.
With improvement in education, the stage will then be set for catching up with the advanced countries in terms of narrowing the gap between us. The patient-doctor ratio, for example, will be reduced and our people will be enlightened about the way to go about things concerning the environment, job creation, new techniques of farming, sanitation, media freedom and pluralism and existence of fundamental human rights, fighting corruption and making very informed decisions that will affect our lives positively and these, hopefully would let us out of the poverty trap because we are 200 years behind the advanced countries.
Of course, we should not expect these to happen without recourse to changing our ways of doing things, but since to be poor, according to Nobel Laureate Armatya Sen, is to lack the basic capabilities to function, development has to be more concerned with enhancing the lives we lead and the freedoms we enjoy. That is what we need and we should aspire to achieve this for our people. This is what will bridge the gap betweeen us and the rest of the world.
TWO inspiring statements relating to the current state in which the continent of Africa finds herself, which are attributed to two fine Ghanaian brains, as well as the reactions they generate, make interesting reading.
First, it was a Justice of the Court of Appeal, Mrs Henrietta Abban, who admonished Africans to reject the third world tag because it was debasing and intended by the richer countries to further exploit the continent.
The substance of her argument is that Africa has great potential and opportunities that the developed countries are interested in exploiting, if they can keep Africans perpetually inferior. The learned judge was reported to have urged Africans to not accept the third world tag, which connotes being second rate citizens (Daily Graphic, May 20, 2006).
Second, Mr Ishmael Yamson, the Chairman of the Council of the University of Ghana, also has stated that Africa does not have any excuse to be poor, since the continent is endowed with natural and human resources.
“We Africans should not be talking about poverty now because Africa has more natural resource than any other continent in the world and God has endowed the continent with people with brains”, he was reported as saying (Daily Graphic, May 22, 2006).
It is obvious from these two poignant statements that the destiny of Africa is in the hands of Africans ourselves and that it is only Africans who can redeem the African continent from this mentality.
But the learned judge’s admonition was beyond the point and the responses from Kojo Smith and my senior colleague, Kofi Akordor, go to fuel the situation. The fact is that the third world classification/taxonomy is not about capabilities/ abilities that make people in the third world inferior to any race in the world. Should we run way from the fact that we are a third world country? Should we not be ashamed that in spite of our enormous natural and human resources, our continent is the least developed in the world? The third world tag is about a state of affairs which we cannot run away from. It is and can never be about the capability or capacity of the people of Africa or other third world countries because there have been countless occasions that Africans, or to come home, Ghanaians, for that matter, as Kojo Smith wrote, have out-classed their counterparts from the so-called developed countries in various endeavours.
There is no qualms about the fact that poverty exists and some people are poor, while others are rich. This scenario applies to the classification of worlds into first (developed), second (developing) and third (least developed or developing) countries.
Adam Szirmai (2005) in “The Dynamics of Socio-economic Development” traces the genesis of the third world to after World War II, when the term came into vogue as a designation for developing countries. This third world was contrasted with the first world of the advanced capitalist countries and the second world of the industrialised socialist countries in Eastern Europe.
So, in effect, what this means is that in the third world countries development is nothing comparable to that of the advanced countries. Most of the third world could be found in the entire of Africa but Africa is not alone in this exclusivity - countries in Latin America and Asia are also inclusive of this category.
The patent or common characteristic and interest of these countries have to with the widening gap between them and the rest of the affluent industrialised world. The same is implied by such terms as “North” and “South” divide.
And these characteristics include the ineffective bureaucratic structures in operation, the inability to provide the basic necessities of life such as food, clothing and shelter, how to handle disease, epidemics and any natural disaster when they occur, impoverishment and malnutrition, poor health, illiteracy, living in environmentally degraded and filthy areas, little political voice and political participation and the lack of personal and political power.
This is not to say that these do not occur in the developed countries such as the USA, UK, Canada or France. They do but in those countries, the predictability of and attachment to these phenomenon are excellent, whilst the reverse is what prevails in the third world generally.
Should a natural disaster like an earthquake occur in Africa and the US, for instance, the difference will be the structures and institutions put in place to tackle the issue.
While the structures will be non-existent in the third world and for that matter Africa, they will be readily available in the US such that the impact of the disaster there will be minimal and might not be felt as much.
It is a truism that conditions of poverty are particularly desperate in Africa, for instance, where real income on the average is abysmal. The real income of the average American is more than 50 times that of the average person in sub-Saharan Africa and the amount of food that go to waste in the US can feed famished people in the world’s poorest countries like Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Somalia.
Therefore, what we must admit is that we are what we are just because the necessary structures to tackle the basic necessities of life to make things better for us as a people are lacking in our part of the world. However, if all of us have been graciously endowed with those resources or the same structures and institutions, the difference will not have to do with capacity or the thinking ability of us as a people. Maybe, we would do much better than people in advanced countries.
We need not hammer the classification and all that but rather critically look at how to ensure that this predicament does not ensnare us forever. Fortunately for us, we have made some gains, as far as ending the scourge of poverty is concerned. We are blessed with the enormous human and natural resources, as Mr Yamson rightly pointed out.
We are also aware of the basic facts about the predicament that faces us. This is supported by an anonymous poor man (a Ghanaian), who was quoted by Stephen C. Smith (2005) in his book “Ending Global Poverty” as saying that “ Poverty is like a heat: You cannot see it, you can only feel it; so to understand poverty, you have to go through it”. For me this is a strong indication of our awareness and a starting point of fighting the scourge.
The story of poverty so far is one of both good and bad news; the progress so far made and what remains to be done.
In spite of the enormous human and natural resource, we need to have visionary leaders, as Kofi Akordor rightly wrote, who will be transparent in their dealings and be accountable to the very people who put them at the helms of affairs Our leaders should let the people’s well-being be cardinal to their policies. Without good leadership to harness these resources, nothing better can happen in the lives of the people in the third word.
Our leaders should eschew parochial and selfish interests. They should fashion out policies that will not gag and suppress the people but make them active participants in the governance programme because suppression can breed revolution or conflict, which have become hallmarks of our part of the world.
Since most of the third world are emerging democracies, they need to nurture these paths with care and patriotism devoid of corruption. We should take advantage of globalisation and forge closer regional relations among ourselves. The existing regional barriers to free trade, movement of goods and people should give way to a common socio-economic and political ties to fight external hegemony.
Besides, education of the highest quality should be our priority and it is incumbent on our educational institutions to ensure that our people are provided with the best of education, which is not interested only in making graduates pass out of schools without benefiting the country. I mean practical education which develops critical and analytical minds for solving pressing societal problems.
Our educational institutions should encourage more researches from students and use some of these in lieu of written examinations which create the “chew, pour, pass and forget” syndrome. When a student conducts a research, he would always remember the substance of his studies more than the lecture notes he has to cram to pass an examination and forget everything thereafter.
With improvement in education, the stage will then be set for catching up with the advanced countries in terms of narrowing the gap between us. The patient-doctor ratio, for example, will be reduced and our people will be enlightened about the way to go about things concerning the environment, job creation, new techniques of farming, sanitation, media freedom and pluralism and existence of fundamental human rights, fighting corruption and making very informed decisions that will affect our lives positively and these, hopefully would let us out of the poverty trap because we are 200 years behind the advanced countries.
Of course, we should not expect these to happen without recourse to changing our ways of doing things, but since to be poor, according to Nobel Laureate Armatya Sen, is to lack the basic capabilities to function, development has to be more concerned with enhancing the lives we lead and the freedoms we enjoy. That is what we need and we should aspire to achieve this for our people. This is what will bridge the gap betweeen us and the rest of the world.
Globalisation and consumption patterns in Ghana
Story: Stephen Sah
AS I walked the street in Accra the other day, a cousin of mine whom I least expected to meet in town patted me from behind. He had slung a huge bag around his neck and was sweating. I did not know the bag’s content but before I could ask him what had brought him to the national capital, Yaw, frustrated as he was, told me that he had come to the Russian Embassy.
His mission? He had received a sound system from his friend who was domiciled in Russia. After fidgeting with the machine in order to operate it, he realised it would not work. He had to rush down to Accra to send the brochure which was written in Russian for interpretation.
He was told that the machine could no longer work and he either had to throw it away before going back to Sefwi or just send it back as a decorative piece in his room to sort of show off.
That was the story of my cousin. And as I continued my journey, I asked myself whether that was where globalisation had taken us? Instantly, I decided to do a piece on this globalisation thing and the new consumption patterns, especially taking into consideration the fact that globalisation has turned the world into a small village and yet making the developing countries be at the receiving end; they have virtually become dumping grounds for all manner of products.
In shops and on the streets all kinds of products are being offered for sale. There have been many occasions that people have bought products and have not been able to use them, especially electronic gadgets . Undoubtedly, this normally happens to those who purchase on impulse.
The fact that globalisation has turned the world into a small a place cannot be underestimated. Anyone without even an e-mail, which will one day give way for other innovations, may be described as being old fashioned.
So one has to be caught in this trendy thing and the niceties that go with globalisation. Now there isn’t anything much a secret, not even with personal e-mails and the like, because people in other countries can make orders for goods from abroad through the Internet and pay for them to be shipped to them without stepping a foot forward.
Similarly, others, through the same means, embark on fraudulent activities and steal credit card numbers of others to transact similar businesses. This can go on for long until the theft is detected by the victims.
A village the world has become indeed. What an instant communication with a relative or friend in a far away country via telephone, the Internet or video can do cannot be described; in fact, serious problems can be solved with that and make things happen in people’s lives. That is globalisation for you.
However, at the flip side of this trend is the gloomy picture of how businesses and individuals are being taken for granted through fraudulent cyber activities, unreliable and malfunctioning 'robot' systems, as in the case of my cousin, the production and supply of shoddy goods and you mention the rest.
The above notwithstanding, globalisation and modernity have come with them very sophisticated and improved ways of doing things, particularly in industry, marketing, medicine, music, and consumption, among others, bringing into sharp focus the rationality of bureaucracy, at least, in the advanced economies. In those economies the new consumption patterns are very efficient, predictable and convenient.
In the light of the impact that globalisation and modernity had on the world, this article is looking at their impact on our national economy and how Ghanaians, in our modest way, are faring , particularly in the areas of marketing and new consumption patterns.
These are clearly manifested in the emergence of highly improved advertising strategies and products in the country. In the banking sector, for instance, the introduction of electronic and or online banking have become buoyant with the use of debit and credit cards, and Automated Teller Machines (ATM) providing banking (or is it cash?) out of ‘town’.
There is also the sprouting of wayside fast food joints, popularly called ‘check check’ in Ghana, competing alongside conventional restaurants and supermarkets or malls (referred to as one-stop shops). Unlike in the past when there were departmental shops in the cities and bigger towns where only very few people, especially the affluent or those on monthly salaries, could go for shopping, now all sorts of products, albeit shoddy, are being offered for sale everywhere, including the streets, and even pharmacies and fuel pump stations have become good sources of one- stop shopping.
These malls provide all kinds of products and services, including salons or barbering shops and even in some designated pharmacy shops one can get anything from toiletries and cosmetics to food and drinks. But can the attributes of the new consumption patterns in the advanced communities, namely efficiency, predictability and convenience, be found in Ghana?
Somehow, these attributes could be said to be making strides but not very firmly rooted on the ground. What accounts for the non-existence of such attributes stems from the fact that the system of accounting in this country is completely at variance with what pertains in the advanced economies where transactions heavily subsists on non-money payments.
The credit cards, cheques and the like do the business with very little money changing hands. So one hardly finds someone with plenty of cash.
Consumption patterns over there are predictable because in one breath one can easily predict what one wanted to buy and get them within the shortest possible time, with security on even the car parks assured. The opposite is what prevails here in Ghana. The unavailability of parking lots with a not-always-assured security for customers in most cases makes shopping unsafe in some of the so-called malls or marts?
Besides, while there is very minimal use of credit cards and the like, the manual counting of plenty of cash makes shopping stressful and where they are used transaction is delayed by the number of people that have to queue.
The idea by the various banks to provide various banking outlets in ‘town’ to avoid customers being left to the mercies of ATM machines, is laudable as some customers experience difficulties understanding the language of these machines. The machines simply won’t work when their services are direly needed. They easily break down and will not dispense with cash. For weekends, it is better one does not attempt. Those days are virtual holidays for the ATM machines. These are the vicissitudes or the irrationalities of rationality.
Strong measures are needed in the accounting system of the economy for it to measure up to the demands of modernity and globalisation. There is the need to have an accounting system to take care of these sophisticated banking products like the credit and debit cards so that individuals will not have to even carry with them large sums of money. This way even armed robbers and confidence tricksters or their like could be damned.
The ‘check check’, no doubt, have brought easy food to the working city dweller, although what is always provided has become one way. Their side effects are a different thing altogether, since it is a fact that cooking for a large number of people normally affects the quality. No one knows where the food is prepared before being brought to the market where it is heated.
Ghanaian consumers do not have much say in determining what bothers them, since there isn’t any strong consumer association in the country that can fight for consumers’ welfare. In the absence of any such association, it is incumbent that producers, manufacturers and importers critically make sure that while they safeguard their interests, the interest of consumers is equally protected to ensure a win-win situation for all.
More innovative ways to encourage the use and acceptance of credit or debit cards and cheques are needed so that the current trend of subsisting heavily on hard cash would be discouraged. It is silly on our part to demand cash for the purchase of such things as cars, or even houses. We need not have to present cash when we purchase things worth more than even ¢1 million, considering the units of our money.
AS I walked the street in Accra the other day, a cousin of mine whom I least expected to meet in town patted me from behind. He had slung a huge bag around his neck and was sweating. I did not know the bag’s content but before I could ask him what had brought him to the national capital, Yaw, frustrated as he was, told me that he had come to the Russian Embassy.
His mission? He had received a sound system from his friend who was domiciled in Russia. After fidgeting with the machine in order to operate it, he realised it would not work. He had to rush down to Accra to send the brochure which was written in Russian for interpretation.
He was told that the machine could no longer work and he either had to throw it away before going back to Sefwi or just send it back as a decorative piece in his room to sort of show off.
That was the story of my cousin. And as I continued my journey, I asked myself whether that was where globalisation had taken us? Instantly, I decided to do a piece on this globalisation thing and the new consumption patterns, especially taking into consideration the fact that globalisation has turned the world into a small village and yet making the developing countries be at the receiving end; they have virtually become dumping grounds for all manner of products.
In shops and on the streets all kinds of products are being offered for sale. There have been many occasions that people have bought products and have not been able to use them, especially electronic gadgets . Undoubtedly, this normally happens to those who purchase on impulse.
The fact that globalisation has turned the world into a small a place cannot be underestimated. Anyone without even an e-mail, which will one day give way for other innovations, may be described as being old fashioned.
So one has to be caught in this trendy thing and the niceties that go with globalisation. Now there isn’t anything much a secret, not even with personal e-mails and the like, because people in other countries can make orders for goods from abroad through the Internet and pay for them to be shipped to them without stepping a foot forward.
Similarly, others, through the same means, embark on fraudulent activities and steal credit card numbers of others to transact similar businesses. This can go on for long until the theft is detected by the victims.
A village the world has become indeed. What an instant communication with a relative or friend in a far away country via telephone, the Internet or video can do cannot be described; in fact, serious problems can be solved with that and make things happen in people’s lives. That is globalisation for you.
However, at the flip side of this trend is the gloomy picture of how businesses and individuals are being taken for granted through fraudulent cyber activities, unreliable and malfunctioning 'robot' systems, as in the case of my cousin, the production and supply of shoddy goods and you mention the rest.
The above notwithstanding, globalisation and modernity have come with them very sophisticated and improved ways of doing things, particularly in industry, marketing, medicine, music, and consumption, among others, bringing into sharp focus the rationality of bureaucracy, at least, in the advanced economies. In those economies the new consumption patterns are very efficient, predictable and convenient.
In the light of the impact that globalisation and modernity had on the world, this article is looking at their impact on our national economy and how Ghanaians, in our modest way, are faring , particularly in the areas of marketing and new consumption patterns.
These are clearly manifested in the emergence of highly improved advertising strategies and products in the country. In the banking sector, for instance, the introduction of electronic and or online banking have become buoyant with the use of debit and credit cards, and Automated Teller Machines (ATM) providing banking (or is it cash?) out of ‘town’.
There is also the sprouting of wayside fast food joints, popularly called ‘check check’ in Ghana, competing alongside conventional restaurants and supermarkets or malls (referred to as one-stop shops). Unlike in the past when there were departmental shops in the cities and bigger towns where only very few people, especially the affluent or those on monthly salaries, could go for shopping, now all sorts of products, albeit shoddy, are being offered for sale everywhere, including the streets, and even pharmacies and fuel pump stations have become good sources of one- stop shopping.
These malls provide all kinds of products and services, including salons or barbering shops and even in some designated pharmacy shops one can get anything from toiletries and cosmetics to food and drinks. But can the attributes of the new consumption patterns in the advanced communities, namely efficiency, predictability and convenience, be found in Ghana?
Somehow, these attributes could be said to be making strides but not very firmly rooted on the ground. What accounts for the non-existence of such attributes stems from the fact that the system of accounting in this country is completely at variance with what pertains in the advanced economies where transactions heavily subsists on non-money payments.
The credit cards, cheques and the like do the business with very little money changing hands. So one hardly finds someone with plenty of cash.
Consumption patterns over there are predictable because in one breath one can easily predict what one wanted to buy and get them within the shortest possible time, with security on even the car parks assured. The opposite is what prevails here in Ghana. The unavailability of parking lots with a not-always-assured security for customers in most cases makes shopping unsafe in some of the so-called malls or marts?
Besides, while there is very minimal use of credit cards and the like, the manual counting of plenty of cash makes shopping stressful and where they are used transaction is delayed by the number of people that have to queue.
The idea by the various banks to provide various banking outlets in ‘town’ to avoid customers being left to the mercies of ATM machines, is laudable as some customers experience difficulties understanding the language of these machines. The machines simply won’t work when their services are direly needed. They easily break down and will not dispense with cash. For weekends, it is better one does not attempt. Those days are virtual holidays for the ATM machines. These are the vicissitudes or the irrationalities of rationality.
Strong measures are needed in the accounting system of the economy for it to measure up to the demands of modernity and globalisation. There is the need to have an accounting system to take care of these sophisticated banking products like the credit and debit cards so that individuals will not have to even carry with them large sums of money. This way even armed robbers and confidence tricksters or their like could be damned.
The ‘check check’, no doubt, have brought easy food to the working city dweller, although what is always provided has become one way. Their side effects are a different thing altogether, since it is a fact that cooking for a large number of people normally affects the quality. No one knows where the food is prepared before being brought to the market where it is heated.
Ghanaian consumers do not have much say in determining what bothers them, since there isn’t any strong consumer association in the country that can fight for consumers’ welfare. In the absence of any such association, it is incumbent that producers, manufacturers and importers critically make sure that while they safeguard their interests, the interest of consumers is equally protected to ensure a win-win situation for all.
More innovative ways to encourage the use and acceptance of credit or debit cards and cheques are needed so that the current trend of subsisting heavily on hard cash would be discouraged. It is silly on our part to demand cash for the purchase of such things as cars, or even houses. We need not have to present cash when we purchase things worth more than even ¢1 million, considering the units of our money.
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