The Ghanaian attitude to time and late attendance to programmes of national importance received a backlash from the Korean Ambassador and a team of Korean engineers at a workshop in Accra yesterday.
Lyeo Woon-Ki, the Ambassador, criticised the conduct of the officials of the Ministry of Transport after waiting for almost one hour at a workshop to solicit the inputs of stakeholders for a Master Plan project for Accra, in which the Korean government had provided a $1.5 million funding with technical expertise.
The project seeks to address the traffic congestion in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area by 2035.
The Minister of Transport was expected to attend, but he sent a representative who arrived 43 minutes late.
Mr. Woon-Ki said “Ghanaians should learn to respect time, because it is a valuable and precious resource”.
Hyeokjo Kweon, General Manager of Hanmac Engineering, the consultancy firm that is providing technical expertise for the Master Plan, also expressed his frustration.
“This is your time. Your government is wasting available time just like this. In Korea, if we schedule a programme to start at 9a.m, it starts at the same time,” he stated.
Mr. Kweon later took The Ghanaian Times to the VIP waiting room where the Korean Ambassador and the representative of the EximBank of China waited for their Ghanaian counterparts to arrive.
The programme, was scheduled to begin at 9am and the Korean delegation had to wait until after 43 minutes when Mr. A. Selby and Mr. Lawrence Kumi, Chief Director and Director in charge of Research and Statistics respectively, of the Ministry of Transport, arrived, offering an apology for their lateness.
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