We are such a strange and interesting people, Ghanaians. According to a Ghana News Agency (GNA) report of 21st October, 2008, the World Bank apparently wants poor rural people to pay a deposit, in order to benefit from its new rural solar power initiative - yet those are the very people it is busy handing over a pittance to, every month, for the next seven months, apparently. Incredible!
How many of the poor, who live a "hand-to-mouth" existence, can afford to pay a deposit on anything in this world?
So, instead of breeding and encouraging a dependency-culture amongst our hardworking rural poor (by handing them money for seven months, just to get them to vote for the ruling party in the coming elections: which will then promptly forget that they even exist - once it wins power again!), why does the World Bank not simply use the money it is giving to them as monthly handouts, for the next seven months, as the deposit required for those wishing to benefit from this solar initiative?
Surely, that is a far more dignified way to proceed in dealing with the rural poor in our country: if the World Bank really wants to help them for seven months - as opposed to helping the incumbent regime retain power, in an election year, by stealth?
If those in charge of the project in Ghana, were to get the various district assemblies in the areas in which those 90,000 poor rural dwellers they are targeting, live, to work with the UK DIY Solar philanthropist, Mr. Graham Knight's (DIYSolar@btinternet.com ) http://biodesign.webeden.co.uk/ , they could turn this initiative into an empowerment project - in which an enterprise culture is created for the youth who can be trained to become micro-solar entrepreneurs in rural Ghana.
For those of us who love our country, it is just so disheartening that the many tips and suggestions we put in the public domain, always fall on deaf ears, as far as officialdom is concerned.
Yet, such tips and suggestions are put in the public domain, in the hope that those whose job it is to help improve the quality of life of ordinary people in our country, will make use of them. Sadly, however, at the end of the day, hardly anyone in authority ever bothers to act to explore the possibilities that such tips and suggestions could lead to.
Just what have they got to lose if they followed such tips and leads, I ask - and exactly what are they frightened of? There are actually some people left in our country, who still act for purely altruistic reasons - surprising though that may be to the many corrupt, self-seekers in our country, today: who seem to think that somehow, in all they do, Ghanaians have to have an "angle" or "hidden agenda" How sickening!
Hmmm, Ghana eyeasem oo: asem ebaba debi ankasa! May God bless and protect our homeland Ghana, always. Long live freedom! Long live Ghana!
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