Ghanaians Want Real Change Now - Those In Government Who Have Not Put Their Thinking-Caps On Yet Must Do So Now

Every nation needs wise leaders able to choose the most suitable individuals to head the critical institution's of state needed  to ensure that progress  is made in the nation-building process.

In light of that vital requirement, it is most unfortunate that so many  of the members of our nation's political class lack the ability to think creatively to help resolve some of the myraid of problems bedevilling our country and hobbling its transformation into a prosperous society.

It makes one wonder how as a people we can possibly  justify continuing to spend billions of cedis annually providing government ministers and high-level public-sector officials with fat salaries, sundry allowances and all manner of perks just to enable them lead comfortable lives at hapless  taxpayers' expense, with nothing much  in return for Ghanaian society's long-term benefit  to show for it at the end of their tenures.

The question is: If many of our politicians  and the upper echelons of the public-sector are mostly unable to think outside the box (to use a hackneyed phrase) to help resolve the myraid of problems Ghanaian society faces, why continue pouring hard-to-find money down the financial equivalents of blackholes through which almost 70 percent of total revenue raised by the Ghana Revenue Authority and other revenue-raising government departments and agencies and  other entities in the public-sector regularly disappear, in the form of overly-generous compensation packages?

Apparently, Hon. Anthony Karbo, the deputy minister for roads, in acknowledging   the atrocious state most of  Ghana's road network is in, presently (now the rains are here), is reported to have stated that the government could not raise the needed loans to repair those  deplorable roads we are forced to travel on across Ghana.

The question there is: Why do these genuises whom we perversely elect to ruin our quality of life and lower the living standards of so many families in Ghana every four years, without fail, think that borrowing money is the only way to build nations in this day and age? Haaba.

For starters, is it not incredibly daft, for example,  that as a people we do not directy link the collection of road tolls to the construction and maintenance of roads in Ghana? Ebeeii.

And why do the genuises who govern our country never think of advertising globally to invite bids from companies to tender to self-finance the  building and maintenance of such tolled  roads for maximum 35-year periods within which they will  not have to pay any taxes on their profits? Ditto self-finance the building, maintenance and running of  passenger and freight trains on railway lines to all the regional capitals from Accra, on the same generous terms and conditions?

Above all, this blog humbly suggests that the ministerial team in charge of the roads ministery should travel to Jamshedpur, the city built and owned by the Tata conglomerate, to see the plastic roads its subsidiary Jusco has built  there with simple and easily transferable technology (mixing melted plastic waste with bitumen) that the Building and Road Research Institute (BRRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial  Reasearch (CSIR) can acquire and train road contactors in Ghana to leverage.

For the information of those now in charge of the roads ministry,  plastic roads have a lifespan that is three times longer than that of conventional bitumen roads. They also bear heavier loads, remain pothole-free throughout their long lifespan, and, because plastic is impermeable to water, are never washed away by flash floods.

Is it not a testament  to the ignorance and provincial-mindedness afflicting  some of the members of our political class that they neither know nor understand that  plastic roads can provide Ghana with much needed disaster resilience at a time when extreme weather events resulting from global climate change can wipe out most of our existing road network in a few hours of heavy rains causing widespread  flooding across the nation? Hmm, Oman Ghana - eyeasem o.

With the planned time-frame for the attainment of all the SDGs  only a little under a decade and half away, there is no time to waste - Ghanaians want change. Real change. Now, not tomorrow.  For heaven's sake, the  unproductive politicians amongst those now in charge of our homeland Ghana, who have not done so yet,  must put their creative-thinking-caps on now. Haaba.