Opinions of Friday, 14 May 2021
Columnist: Richmond Sarpong
Fixing the country goes beyond political parties and government. We need a holistic approach to fixing the country. Government alone or an individual cannot fix the country. I will want to address some aspect of the economy starting with our Educational institution.
1. Educational Sectors: All educational systems in Ghana and the whole of Africa as fail as a continent. These are some questions worth disturbing enough; What makes a school dropout in the second year to be successful by designing Bolt App for the world whiles a four-year university graduate becomes stranded?
2. What secrets are thought in some institution outside Africa that we are not teaching our students in Ghana and Africa? What makes some of the Ghanaian students travel abroad and becomes more successful academically and practice what they learnt but when they are in Ghana, they were trailing papers and worse is to complete with “Pass Class”.
Education is the bloodline of every country and every economy is driven by human capacity bother strength and intellect. We have all the academic titles you can imagine in Ghana and Africa as a continent, but we fail to address the issues of the continent. Lecturers and Teachers are not demonstrating anything practical for students to follow.
All graduating university students only think of being employed and nothing more. We are all locked in a box based on what we are taught in the universities which yields nothing. With all the degrees, we have good rainfalls in Ghana and goes waste. We have lots of recycling waste and none yields any results in Ghana.
We have better raw materials, natural resources, and favourable climatic conditions and we still cannot utilize it because nothing comes out of educational systems excepts to be employed. #FixTheCountry #FixTheEducationalSyetms #LecturerFixYourself #TeacherFixYourself
3. High Unemployment Rate: The unemployment rate is rising because our leaders, in general, have failed us; All religious leaders have failed us. All our political leaders are failures and must bow their heads in shame with disappointment. All our educational leaders must bow their heads in shame including Lecturers and Teachers alike.
All our students’ complete school only to be employed by the service sector. How can engineering students complete a whole three to four years degree without a single practical’s?
We are witnessing graduating students with first-class each year but cannot solve any real-life problem in their field of studies excepts they travel outside to be more useful or better still goes through another cycle of education to more successful outside the continents.
Every three to four years, we have students passing out from our tertiary educations becoming more stranded at completing than before embarking on their tertiary experience.
Cannot we as leaders, educational institutions, government group some of these students including the tertiary institutions with a regional assignment more rewarding with prospects of being lifetime employment.
Some universities including Coventry University, give students opportunities including employment to train them as data scientist in their labs.
These students with exposure to a real-life situation in data science come out to be extremely successful. We have a lot of IT projects and Engineering Projects we have not utilized in Ghana and Africa as a continent.
These are some of the projects that can look at regionally:
a) Assign all 16 regions digitization to the tertiary institutions including students in respective fields without single funding, through the completion of this digitization exercise some of these students automatically are employed because there will be the need data centre administrators and staffs in all regions as well as data entry staffs;
b) Assign energy production and task the tertiary institution if you can not create something new, emulate experiences from other continents.
We only depend on hydro energy as the main source of electricity with other supporting plants. Assigned other tasked such as tiles with electricity power supply functionality as part of smart city development. We have other waste in the system, can this waste recycle and still have some form of energy from it;
c) Assign some of the engineers and other experts to harvesting rainfalls as safe water yields channel these water to where it needs mostly since UN even supports projects relating to the supply of water.
Funding and other support can be acquired as a nation to make sure every district as a rain harvester plants for supplying good drinking water for such district leading to a reduction in the unemployment rate; d) Ghana can be noted for good solar energy if we know how to use the sun.
Task the institutions including students with energy efficiency using the sun. A good solar system with high efficiency with sustainability and maintenance culture. Ghana has been importing simple things such as street lights from other countries.
Why not engage some of our higher institution of knowledge with these tasks to explore and build some of these street lighting systems from scratch to finishing with the aim that by the time they finish, the university will have a manufacturing plant supply to other parts of the worlds hence leading to employments of some of the graduates.
We have over 1000 projects our graduates can be engaged on as a country to bring quicker development and reduce the unemployment rate and also to engage our tertiary institutions to be more productive. #FixTheCountry #FixTheEducation #FixTheUnemployment
4. Member of Parliament and Minister: Member of Parliament works and get noticed in a region more than the regional minister.
I do not understand and do not know why and how these fundamental principles by our constitution get missed up. In summary, (a) Under Article 93(2) of the Constitution the legislative power of Ghana is vested in Parliament and is exercised in accordance with the Constitution.
No person or body other than Parliament has the power to pass any measure with the force of law except by or under the authority conferred by an Act of Parliament. The legislative function consists of passing Bills and scrutinizing statutory instruments and deciding whether to annul them or allow them to take effect by the effluxion of time.
Law-making is considered to be the most important function of Parliament. The same MP who is supposed to be formulating laws are the same people our constitution mandate to hold ministerial positions based on the following: Article 78 (1) Ministers of State shall be appointed by the President with the prior approval of Parliament from among members of Parliament or persons qualified to be elected as members of Parliament, except that the majority of Ministers of State shall be appointed from among members of Parliament.
And Article 79 (2) A person shall not be appointed a Deputy Minister unless he is a Member of Parliament or is qualified to be elected as a member of Parliament. Why not split these functions for clarity and let us tasked these ministers through electoral processes with regional developments.
A failure on the side of a minister has got nothing to do with someone who is formulating laws for the growth of the country. Every minister a role and must be tasked with responsibility and failure to achieve the expected goals of the citizens must be voted out through electoral processes.
The constitution needs a lot of fixing and those tasked to fix the constitution have doubled with other responsibilities leading to low productivity as law formulating body.
#FixTheCountry #FixTheConstitution #MinisterFixTheRegion #MinisterFixTheSectors #MPFixTheLaw
In Fixing the country we need a holistic approach to fixing the country from the top-to-bottom and bottom-to-top.
With limited resources and low-income earners as parents within the country, an individual can do little and nothing at all in the Ghanaian situations #FixingTheCountry. Resources must be channel to the right places for the right results for faster economic growth and development in every aspect of our life.