From My Lazy Chair

The media landscape in Ghana is increasingly becoming widened in scope. As such it has brought in its trails a lot of challenges with regards to standard and professionalism. While the print media is struggling to cope with production cost, some local radio stations continue to hit the airwaves churning out all manner of information in the name of information dissemination. It appears every district or Municipality in Ghana now has at least one radio station. Perhaps the long held philosophy that radio gets result, has been the main motivator for people to establish radio stations. But what we must know is that radio travels faster than any other media and therefore whatever information we are putting out there must be done with a lot of circumspection. But who is there sanitized the airwaves? The little survey, not scientific though, I have done indicated that most of the local radio stations we have were established by politicians to promote their personal political agenda and tho

The president of the republic of Ghana had hinted of establishing the office of the independent prosecutor that would be clothed with all the powers to fight corruption. The role of this new office would be grounded in law to be able to bite anyone found to have engaged in act(s) of corruption. Some of these initiatives are good but my personal worry is that they are often just mere cosmetic exercise. However, to the proponent, It is believed that would solve all the corruption issues that are reported every now and then especially in the public and civil services. I reckon it’s only a duplication of roles and I think we don’t need it. My first difficulty is the word ‘independent’. There is no such thing as independent so long as that office is the idea of someone or group of people. In other words, someone constitutes that office and therefore those working in there would owe some amount of allegiance to that person. For instance, the office of the EC is clearly an independent in

The choice of place for the use of an outgoing president as office has always generated a lot of debates among government officials and the general populace. We saw the same thing happen during former president John Agyekum Kufuor’s time as has happened when former president John Mahama was exiting. In the case of president Mahama, a letter was written to the incoming government to allow him to maintain his official residence as office. But that did not go down well with majority of Ghanaians. Meanwhile, the constitution of Ghana provides that an outgoing president should constitute a commission to decide among other things the public facility to use as office. The question one would ask is that why then do we have issue with anything coming from the presidential commission? Where are we getting it wrong? One thing I have come to realise as the bane on our forward movement as a country is that, whenever we are confronted with a particular problem or the other, we do not attempt to

The Ghana police service has issued a press statement warning the general public to desist from taking the law into their own hands to meet out instant justice to suspected criminals. The statement also sought to encourage the public to report any such activity to the police for action to be taken. In as much as the statement may be welcoming to some of us, I think it will not achieve anything! In other words, I am very sure such statements may have been issued in the past. And my question is: what is the outcome of those statements? Wouldn’t the new statement only seeking to suggest the fact that it had not worked and therefore safe to conclude that the solution to the problem goes beyond typing and issuing press statement? For people to embark on instant justice, it simply tells you the system has failed – that the people have lost interest and confidence in the state institution mandated to protect life and property. The general public appears to be pathetic towards to police s

It is required by law that any business venture undertaken in Ghana is properly registered and registration documents obtained at the Registrar General’s Department (RGD) in Accra. It is binding on both Ghanaians and foreigners who own business or want to operate. It is, however, interesting that there are quite considerable number of businesses in Ghana that have not been registered. This may be due to the complexity in the registration process and duplication roles not excluding ignorance a result of inadequate education. The first step getting your business registered begins with obtaining Tax Identification number (TIN) at the offices of any Ghana Revenue Authority in your municipality or district or even at the Registrar General in Accra. The TIN application forms are free as well as the registration itself. The next step is to purchase the business registration forms at the Registrar General, fill out properly and submit at the same place. The submitted forms go throug

The just ended general elections saw the opposition NPP winning the presidential elections with a very wide margin and having majority seat in parliament. To some of us, it has not come to us as a surprise. We saw the same thing in 2008 when the NPP then in government lost to the opposition NDC. A lot of post-election analyses are suggesting that the NPP’s numerous political promises earned them the victory. But I bet to differ! It is not true that a lot of the electorates who voted massively for the NPP believed in promises like ‘one district one factory’ or ‘one village one dam’. It’s absolutely not true. Come to think of it; imagine a land lock area where there’s no river. How then do you build a dam? Or am I wrong? Just as the NPP campaigned on its achievements in 2008 and expected Ghanaians to retain them in government after the eight years, the NDC did exactly the same in the 2016 general elections. The NDC thought they have achieved so much and it was all over the place

Not too long ago, Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) has dominated news reports and so much public discourse over Government’s decision to sell it to private operators. Reasons for and against the proposed sell have strongly been made to justify the sell. Whereas the government is bent on selling it due to the inefficiency and ineptitude that has surrounded it over the years, the workers of ECG are fighting tooth and nail to thwart government’s proposed sale. ECG workers have countered government’s reasons for the move insisting that government should wash its hands off the management of the company and things would just be fine. But I think the position taken by the staff of ECG is not one that is borne out genuine concern to do things right but to protect their source of daily bread. Even though I do not have any technical knowledge in energy, I just want to do some layman analysis of some development having to do with ECG prepaid credit. I am one person who will support the s