Ti-Kelenkelen looked up only to receive the shock of his life. The bus stop had no ceiling. It had only a roof, which was made of plywood obvious to anyone looking up. Upon closer watch it also became obvious that the top of the plywood was overlain with about two-centimetres thick of rubber, but obviously that was no help. To use such pliable materials for a roof close to the equator is one of the worst architecture and construction errors of all time. It is exposed to severe swings of vagaries of the weather. No wonder it was already leaky under rain.
That raises certain basic construction and financing questions. Why use pliable material for the roofing of a public project in the tropics of tropics? Is the contractor a proper contractor or he or she won the contract by a criterion of family and friends? And the workers, who executed the job, are they so ignorant or so stupid that they failed or refused to draw the contractor’s attention to the misdoing? Or it was the case of the typical Ghanaian attitude – they just wanted their money, so did not care whether Ghana was being short-changed?
The financial questions include: Did the contractor use the wrong materials, because he or she expected Mahama to still be in office into 2017; that way no one will ask questions about this intentional violation of basic construction rules? If Mahama did not prosecute culprits identified in reports by committees he himself set up – on Ghana Youth Entrepreneurial and Employment Development Agency (GYEEDA), Savannah Accelerated-Development Authority (SADA), etc., – why will he care about a “remote” bus stop contract? Or the contactor had paid out too much into the NDC party campaign kitty, and so had very little left for the project? Or still, he or she was given too little cash that a plywood roof in the tropics is what Ghana could afford thereby?
Yet the most crucial question of all is where were the supervisors from the Ministries of Works & Housing and Road Transport and the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA)? These are the agencies Ghanaians, through the Constitution, have set up to protect our interest in such matters. If they do their job well, those public-contract violations will never happen.
Whatever the reason(s), Ghana needs to investigate the puzzles in the Ayalolo paradox, because Ghana’s money – as US comedy actor, Bill Cosby, will put it – is a terrible thing to waste.
The first few weeks it begun operating, the buses run fare-free, fully air-conditioned with automated doors. And people were patronising it somewhat. When Ayalolo started charging, the news was that the tickets are available at the main stations and on the bus, but the innovation is the possibility that one could also buy tickets for a period at a discount.
The main difficulty with Ayalolo is due to the change in plan of how the fleet was originally billed to run – to arrive at a bus stop on time, does not wait for long, and leave on time. It was to ensure timeliness that the contract insisted on separate bus lanes specially built for the Ayalolo fleet. By omitting the exclusive bus lanes and throwing the Ayalolo fleet among the usual traffic, President John Dramani Mahama; his Transport Minister, Fifi Kwetey, and; the AMA boss, Alfred O. Vanderpuije, should have realised they have omitted the condition for timeliness, which was supposed to make Ayalolo attractive.
Assuming even after leaving out the exclusive lanes, they, somehow, expected Ayalolo to be timely. Yet few months into the fleet’s operation the main consequence of their non-compliance is staring all of us in the face – the buses are running virtually or sometimes absolutely empty, burning away fuel and all. Should that not have told the AMA boss and transport minister that having foreclosed timeliness the factors for running the Ayalolo fleet have changed calling for alteration to the original operating plan? What was the original concept anyway: A fleet of buses that are simply running without care for the money sunk into it or a project that would make profit on the investment poured into it?
Before answering the question, Dear reader, remember what President J. A. Kufuor once said: You must run a country the way you run a business, with the expectation of eventual profit or surplus. The Ayalolo fleet runs on fuel and battery, it has parts that are slowly but surely wearing out and, in time, must be replaced, and if it makes no money, let alone profit, wherefrom will maintenance money come?
Furthermore, Ayalolo was set up with a loan that the people of Ghana must one day pay back. If it makes no profit, and the payment time arrives, we may have to take money for building a school or hospital in certain needy districts to pay up. And the people of Ghana will be the losers, for what? Simply because the people who executed the project decided to cut corners, since they think or rather know that in Ghana all we will do is talk; no one will demand accountability, no one will take action to prosecute the culprits (public and private) and demand that they pay up the amounts they stole or what their intentional acts and omissions caused Ghana to lose.
Few points can be stated for sure.
One, the Mahama administration did not consider all the necessary issues and did not prioritise before implementing the Ayalolo transport system. They intentionally omitted aspects of the intended project. All because it was for them only part of their general effort to win Election 2016; hence they did not care whether it attained the original goal of benefitting the people of Ghana and eventually making profit. As a concept that is one of the reasons the people of Ghana voted – no, actually, threw – out the Mahama administration and the NDC out of Parliament in such historic numbers.
And that should also be a lesson, no, a warning to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his men and women – delivering on their promises pre-supposes doing things differently, i.e., doing things right and solely for the welfare and progress of the people of Ghana. If they come away (as a Morgan Freeman character in Lean On Me would put it) not knowing any better than the Mahama administration, they should just remember that Ghanaians are billed to speak again in 2020. And what we can pray for and insist on is the people’s own verdict in 2020, for, now we know (from Election 2016) that when no one succeeds in manipulating election results Ghanaians speak properly.
“Why use pliable material for the roofing of a public project in the tropics of tropics? Is the contractor a proper contractor or he or she won the contract by a criterion of family and friends?”
“These are the agencies Ghanaians, through the Constitution, have set up to protect our interest in such matters. If they do their job well, those public-contract violations will never happen.”
“And that should also be a lesson, no, a warning to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his men and women – delivering on their promises pre-supposes doing things differently…”
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