The Melcom disaster and matters arising
I knew him simply as Gerald. I had gone out of my way to ask of his name when one day, at the Dansoman Melcom shop, I noticed some exceptional good mannerism in him.
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As a young affable manager in charge of the Dansoman branch some four or five years ago, I saw Gerald as very helpful and customer friendly. He was always on the shop floor attending to customers.
He moved on a couple or so years later but I did not know he had been transferred to the Achimota branch of Melcom after he left Dansoman. I did not even know he was among the 14 who died in what has come to be known as the Melcom disaster until last week when I saw his one year memoriam in the Daily Graphic.
That is how close the unfortunate Melcom disaster came to me last year. No wonder that at the time, I experienced deep loss and regret when the six-storey Melcom building collapsed on November 7, 2012.
I felt a deep loss and grief for the simple reason that I shopped for household cleaning items there and I liked them.
I sympathised with Melcom at the time of their loss because I had come to accept them as one of the few decentralised, well-stocked and convenience retail shops providing affordable everyday household goods to consumers as well as giving employment to hundreds of Ghanaians.
Last year, after the unfortunate incident, their leadership quickly came out and by doing so portrayed a company that was in deep shock, regret and mourning. That is why I was moved to devote an article, one week after the incident, to them, the injured and those who lost their lives in an article entitled, “Remembering the dead and the injured.”
In the said article, I implored the management of the company to be guided by the hard lessons they had gathered from the unfortunate crisis.
The import of my article was that in order not to leave any sour taste that could destroy the goodwill they had enjoyed to that date, they should approach their crisis management both internally and externally with the utmost care.
Exactly one year on, it is troubling to hear that some of the survivors are still living with deep traumatic stress; something that should normally be dealt with the utmost professional attention within the first few weeks, or at best, months.
According to a Daily Graphic report on Friday, November 8, some of the survivors were said to be badly shaken emotionally by the incident. Per the story, some of the 81 survivors continue to experience sleep disorders and phobia for storey buildings.
One of the survivors who spoke to the Daily Graphic said he was trapped under the rubble for two days, with no water or food. He is reported to have survived on his urine for two days. He is allegedly traumatised to the extent that he cannot to date walk in front of any storey building.
Melcom might have helped the survivors to recover from their injuries including broken limbs, internal disorders and lacerations but one of the critical healing processes that any survivor coming out of such a traumatic incident should undergo is psychotherapy.
The mental agony is something that could come back to haunt. How much of coaching and counselling by professional psychotherapists have been made available to the survivors of the Melcom disaster one year on?
It is reassuring to note that the Ghana Psychological Association (GPA) has offered to help the survivors who need help in the management of their post-disaster trauma. Speaking to the Daily Graphic, the Public Relations Officer of the GPA, Dr Kingsley Nyarko, is reported to have explained that the exposure to traumatic events could have negative emotional effects on an individual.
One would have wished that this kind of advice would have come earlier and at the time of treatment. Nonetheless, an Akan proverb says that it is never too late to go back if you forget. One only hopes that what may have been a slip could be effectively corrected.
For the sake of all the survivors of the Melcom disaster who, one year on, are still living with emotional consequences from the incident, Melcom should complete the good work they started and work with the GPA to administer the needed psychotherapy.
The total healing of the survivors need to be brought to completion so that their emotions and fears will not push them to become social misfits in future.
Melcom, in my mind, has its good name to protect at this stage, and I trust it will make good whatever it takes to close this chapter on a more positive note.
