need for thoughtfulness

Yaw Boadu Ayeboafo Opinion Mar - 26 - 2015 , 01:53

Sometimes when you hear some of the political communicators and party spokespersons in public discourse on radio about the debilitating effects of the power outages, you may assume that there are two distinctive groups of Ghanaians, one totally immune from the effects of the power rationing and the other which suffers all the ills of the power outages.

What it comes to is that for most of these partisan discussants, because they profess to be members of political parties, the issues that confront us must be seen limitedly in partisan lenses, irrespective of the impact of these occurrences on national development.

Last week I was struck by comments made on a radio station by a health worker. Since then, I have thought endlessly about the lack of sensitivity displayed in public discourse as to whether the problems of electricity have to be managed or fixed, depending on how we see things. In reality, all that we have been doing is how to meet present demands. But whether to manage or fix the power problem, each time we experience shortage in power supply, we suffer irreparable and irreplaceable losses.

Lesson

That indeed was the great lesson that I learnt from the health worker who was commenting on the power outages and healthcare delivery, with the Achimota Hospital as an example. The argument of the health worker is simple. She pointed out that when we cook food and put it into the fridge and there is no power, it gets spoilt and we grumble and throw it away but we are able to cook again and have our meals. However, if one is sick and gets to the hospital and there is no power, the story becomes different.

The foundation of the argument is that when one is in pain and one gets to the hospital but the staff are lackadaisical, one feels hurt, but it is more painful when the doctors and nurses are eager to help but they cannot do anything because there is no electricity to do so. She explained that one could be involved in an accident and taken to a health facility where there are eager and friendly doctors and nurses who cannot offer any assistance because there is no power. What does one do in the circumstance? She asks what happens assuming one’s wife, sister or mother has gone to a health facility to give birth and delivers a premature baby who needs to be placed in an incubator and there is no electricity — a life is lost. How would one feel about the hopeless situation in a tantalising environment where the technology to save life is available but is totally useless as there is no power to make it function to save a human life?

These are functional examples that must get all of us thinking and focussed on the problem which confronts us, but not to look at the problem from the political angle. Surely, there may be a few individuals who may escape such a mishap because of political influence and patronage. However, the majority of our people, if they are involved in any of the misfortunes, will have no relief, irrespective of their political leaning.

Need for adequate power

The solution to the electricity problem lies in the generation of adequate power from installed capacity. It will not come from empty, partisan, uninformed, ill-informed and misinformed political talk.

These facts must not be lost on anyone of us, particularly those of us who would have the privilege of speaking on behalf of others, whether as political party spokespersons or as government communicators. If we are unwilling to share the pain with the people for whatever political gain, we should not rub salt into their open sores. As our elders have said, the lizard maintains that its anger is not directed at the one who shoots to kill it but at the one who stands by, stares and commend its killer for being a good marksman. Such lack of sensitivity attracts public anger against the government or political parties which such reckless and unfeeling individuals purport to represent.