IN CASE YOU HAVE BEEN GIVEN THE IMPRESSION THAT IT ONLY
HAPPENS IN EDUCATION SYSTEMS
I did made the trip to Ghana in June 05 and I am here to
share with you, what some of you may already know but may induce, hopefully,
revolt and revulsion, in others.
My visitor's car arrived at Tema Harbour around the
21st of May. Its arrival at the Harbour buoyed my hope that I could get my car out of the harbour before I set foot in Ghana. I arrived
in Ghana at the end of May to learn that, my car was still trapped in the
“jaws of death” (the nickname, I have since discovered, of Tema harbour). With my brand new MP3
capable stereo tucked snugly under my armpit, I just couldn’t wait to get
my groove on. My first lesson was a brutal one about shipping. Even though the Bill
of Lading for my car had my name on there, there was a clerical error
relating to the container. This meant that, unless the person in question
named did an amendment to the bill of lading, I would not be able to clear my car. The amendment process is fraught
with very stringent hard and fast rules.
While the harbour did not invent that, it sure did make me live a nightmare around this issue. It took
all kinds of bureaucratic manoeuvring and palm greasing to correct the error.
Throughout, my necessary agent was in the fore while I tagged along
angrily like Zakawi, looking for the least opportunity to start a jihad. In all, it took about 3-4days to finish
the voluminous paperwork on what ought to have been a simple process.
At the very end of the Bill of Lading amendment process, we were notified that one Mr. Yenshira ( I hope I spelt his name right), in a bid to safeguard the
interest of customers, has ordered that unless he personally approves an
amendment, it shall not take effect. Asem beba! The next morning, I got to
Tema, a place I know very little about, around 8 a.m. This was to catch
Yenshira and get him to ok the amendment. Well, Yenshira had other plans! He
had earmarked a good portion of that day for a visit to headquarters in
Accra. The only option available to us was to wait. At this point, a
sympathizer and fellow Okyeame member called me to check on my progress at the harbour.
After my lament to this goodwill ambassador, he promised to make a few calls
aimed at speeding up the process on my behalf and he certainly did. Not that
it made a significant
difference anyway. Unfortunately for us, Yenshira decided not to show up at
2 pm. as promised.
A fellow vandal mate (Commonwealth hall at Legon) put the bug in my ear
about the commissioner of customs at Tema the previous day. He was a vandal
too! He advised that I should go and see “Africanus” if things come to a
knotty head. Fearing the worst from this Yenshira man, I went and saw my
vandal mate! Low and behold, the can-do spirit of the vandal prevailed. I
intimated to Africanus that, any system that revolves or pivots on the head
of one person is dysfunctional. I said, “why can’t we have other/more
“Yenshiras” to approve an amendment? Why should it take me a whole day to
get the nod? If you want to find a place where fundamentals of sound
management take a dirty slap every second, try Ghana. Power struggles, party
affiliation, cronyism, nepotism, tribalism and favoritism do not help any.
Talk about the “Peter Principle”!! We have so many square pegs in round
holes that you just want to punch them out of their own misery into
smithereens. Yenshira, I learnt from the grapevine, was actually an IT
person who has arrogated unbridled power onto himself and is running a one
man circus at the harbour. Is he connected to NPP? I don’t know but then how
did he arrogate these powers onto himself with his background? Somebody put
the brakes on!
After visiting the manifest room a zillion times to actualize the
amendment, we moved on to the next stage. Assessment!! Man oh man! For some
reason, this process kept reminding me of a reggae limerick in a song by Max
Romeo and the Upsetters that goes like this, “they fed our mothers with sour
grapes and set our teeth on edge, stealing in the name of the lord.” My
trusted contact advised me on the morning after the amendment was completed
that, the assessment for my car has gone way up because the folks at the
harbor uncovered that my car was a ’99 instead of the ’95 that was stated on
the bill of lading and agreed to by US authorities after thorough
inspection. Jack, we are talking anywhere from 25-28 million cedis for a 95
Honda Civic shipped to help mostly with but not limited to charity work.
These fees are not just overly harsh and expensive, but wicked and
irritating. Wow! I bought this car and saw it with my naked eyes. “This is
not a ’99 Civic”, I argued. It cannot be! Why would the white man sell me a
newer car for less money than he can get by listing it as an older model? Oh
no! “We don’t care”, said the custom folks! We have a formula and it
indicates that your car is a ’99. I have never been so embarrassed!! No just
for me but also, for the ignorance and pigheadedness displayed by our custom
folks.
Here I was, feeling like the conman that I am not. The reading on my
petulance barometer was way off the charts. I called my shipper in the US
and asked him to wade in on the issue. In the middle of our short but often
testy conversation, I was rudely interrupted by Spacefon because my units
run out. This reminded me of how expensive Spacefon was. For almost $8 you
get to talk about 10 minutes to the US. Walai!! Don’t ask me what units are!
Anyway, my shipper promised to fax me some papers to help fight back the
misinterpretation that customs was trying to foist on me. At this point, my
tetchy mood notwithstanding, I had enough sense to advise myself to back off
from our irascible customs officers. I thought their act was derisory at
best but why knock someone if you have your finger in their unrelenting jaw?
After one week of arguments and heady engagements, I was finally allowed to
go verify the VIN # on my badly dented car. The shipper has crammed 5 cars
in one container, thus hanged my car precariously in the container like a
cigarette tucked in the corner of one’s lip. My plan was to copy the VIN#
and take it to Honda Motors for verification. However, my ancestors were
really smiling on me that morning. It was a rainy morning and the car park
at the harbour was virtually impassable. Given the monies that they collect
at the harbour one wonders why it is in such a deplorable state. The harbour
is very dirty and has rattletrap appearance. Clean it up! Anyway, the filth
did not stop me from trudging towards my car after the gateman signaled us
in. I hurriedly snatched the paperwork from my agent and began to compare it
to the VIN# or chassis # as they call it. My suspicion was right!! It did
not take long to realize that someone copied the number wrongly. My first
instinct was to chew out my agent. Poor man! I have never cussed so much
under my breath. Of course I could not cuss them out openly for they may
throw another curve ball at me. I have had enough at this time and time was
not on my side. This discovery led to a long rework of my papers and
eventually a reassessment of the duty on my car. The price difference was
significant and I am happy that I caught the anomaly. Folks, don’t take
their word for it. Always trust but certainly verify.
The next stage of our saga was to go and pay the assessed fees and get a
release for my ride. Before one can pay the assessment on his or her car, he
must go to the ministry of finance and get a tax ID number. Why is this so?
This normally takes half to a full day’s work. As if we’ve not suffered
enough, electricity was off that morning at the ministry. This meant that
the process had to be done manually and entered electronically later on. By
late noon, the clerk returned with the Tax ID# to my agent’s office. The
secretary started work on filing our paperwork to the manifest room again.
This time, it was to verify charges and get approval to go pay our fees. Why
we had to go back to the manifest room again beats me. If an assessment has
been done by a competent officer, and a tax ID obtained, why must we go to
the manifest room again? I guess to double check the assessment huh? Hmmm!!
At my agent’s office and with my prodding, the secretary quickly dispatched
my filing to the manifest room. Once you file electronically, you have to
wait for about an hour to get results. The filing was rejected. The reason
this time was that the tax ID is not in the GCNet system as such they cannot
give the nod for payment.
You would think that once the ministry of finance generates a Tax ID#, it
will automatically register in a system common to CEPs and the ministry
itself. Oh no! Their systems on both ends are stand alones. The ministry of
finance system is either at loggerheads with the CEPS system or does not
communicate with it, I suppose. I mean why would the ministry or CEPs carve
out a system without bringing all the stakeholders to the table? If they
did, then why are the IT systems not communicating? Where is Yenshira when
you need him? This kind of stovepipe mentality, instead of a system
approach, is strangling us to death. You see, for a country as poor as
Ghana, you would think that we will solve problems in such a way that we
would not have to get it right the umpteenth time, but rather, the first
time around. What sickens me is that, those that make these asinine
decisions are either still in the system as senior officers or collecting
end of service benefits for saddling us with this claptrap. Oh these
scalawags! How I wish I could ring their necks with such glee and funfair!
To solve this conundrum and stanch the time bleed, my agent whipped the
paperwork from the secretary and took the hard copy to the manifest room
manually. It was indeed a manifest room, for it symbolized the manifestation
of a burnished bureaucracy with a sparkle that will make well polished army
boots look like child’s play. Armed with the hardcopy and a few dirty five
thousand cedi notes, we galumphed into the manifest room against the timid
protestation of the doorman. We completed the process in question only to
realize that “now the day is over”. I mused and fumed all the way home,
cussing like there was no tomorrow. To put a kibosh on this prattle, I
decided to lasso myself from the process till I get word that the car is out
of jail. At this time, I was already well into the second week of my
vacation and my contempt for the system in Ghana was making me sick by the
second. Later that afternoon, I got word from my agent that, the money for
my fees has been deposited at the approved bank but the release will have to
wait till the next day. If you think you have patience and fortitude, please
try Ghana. The next morning, the moment of truth unfurled when I wanted to
gallantly drive my car out of the harbour myself, leaving some skid marks for
the CEPs folks to gaze at. Well, by rule one cannot drive your own car out
of the harbour, I was told. There are special designated drivers that you
have to pay to get your car to the gate. By the time my car got to the gate,
I was ready to say “screw Ghana”! This is exactly how I felt!! It has taken
me quite a bit of time to arrive at this tipping point.
My next stop was to go register my car at Tema the next day. If you want to
see a free show on corruption, go to Tema DMV. As soon as you arrive, a
swarm of slimy agents await. Based on your appearance, the fees may vary,
with the highest fees reserved for the “been tos.” At the DMV, you see money
changing hands blatantly. The boldness and crass that attend these
transactions is rather unnerving. In my case, the charge was 650,000 cedis.
As one who is not opposed to agency, if it helps, I wanted an itemized
charge sheet. The lady in question outlined the bribes she had to pay and
how much she stood to gain. I told her that I am not interested in paying
bribes! She said, “good luck then, you must have a lot of time to waste”.
After some haggling, we settled on a price and I moved on. I had things to
do and was not in any mood to club the beehive. One thing I was able to
start on my own was my driver’s license. I refused to pay bribes so I had to
deal with the delay tactics. At one time, a veteran driver like me had to be
tested on road signs that I have never seen in Ghana. My friend had his
license converted at the DMV in Accra without that much hustle. Obviously
some of these European based signs threw me for a loop but who really pays
attention to road signs in Ghana? The state of driving and the level of
lawlessness make you scowl at such attempts by these bribe induced
bureaucrats to tickle your ailing and beat up rear.
The process for car importation into Ghana must be streamlined. The
president cannot talk about golden age of business if he does not have the
political will and intestinal fortitude to correct what seem obvious to a
first grade kid. This falls squarely on the stiff shoulders of the
president. We cannot tolerate this “shouting allowed, action prohibited”
culture to take root in Ghana. Our role is to instigate but in the end, the
president must act to change the public sector. It is in need of dire
change. I am reminded by the attorney general who asked people to bring
forth evidence of corruption so that he can prosecute. Well Mr. Attorney
General, with all due respect, in a country with such stern poverty, a
government department with high obesity is the first sign of corruption. I
noticed that most of our customs folks are very well fed. This ought to ring
a bell in a HPIC country like Ghana. Secondly, all you need is a hidden
camera to nab these corrupt practices. These things are happening blatantly.
The officers at DMV take money openly. All you have to do is send a ghost
person there and the truth will be out.
More importantly, nursing a quagmire and labyrinth of a bureaucracy is
creating this bulge of corruption. Of course this ought to be looked at in a
context of government highhandedness on car importers. There are all kinds
of fees and charges that cannot only be justified but does not make an iota
of sense. Some of these charges can be traced way back to colonial times.
One such fee is something that has to do with bond. What bond do I need at
the harbour? My car never saw a bonded warehouse. It stayed on a muddy patch!
If you add hardcore socialist style bureaucracy to highhandedness, you end
up with a lethal potion that produces a virulent vapour of unbridled
corruption. Personally, I don’t see why extricating one’s car from the
harbour should take more than two-at least or three-at best steps to complete
the process. My agent and I mapped 12 to 13 steps in my transaction. Why Mr.
President why? It should not take more than half a day to clear a car at the
harbour. Please come out with uniform fees for defined engine capacity bands.
Once you fall within a defined bracket you pay a predetermined fee. Make it
simple! Take the ambiguity out of the assessment so as to stanch corruption.
The system as it exists right now has about 10 people doing the job of one
person. Yes, politically this could be a time bomb, for all these folks have
families to feed and joblessness is unrelenting. I mean debt forgiveness not
withstanding. The flip side though is that many more Ghanaians and aliens
alike are being angered by these tedious and ineffective processes. In the
end, the taxpayer is being screwed several times over. We are not only
paying taxes to support redundancies, we also do not get the superior
customer service that we expect and deserve. Most of the people being
angered and alienated in this process are people that form a critical mass
of positive economic levers. If they get turned off and decided to screw
Ghana, there will not be funds to support this canard in the long run. If
Ghanaians, with industrial strength loyalty to their country feel this way,
can you fathom what aliens feel? The jetsam/flotsam coming out of our
premier harbour must be brutally canned sooner rather than later. The bottom
line is that, we have to disgorge the harbour of redundancy and channel the
human resource into activities like traffic regulation, pavement paving, tax
collection and possibly emission inspections tight there at the harbour.
There are ample opportunities to create jobs if the authorities will spend
our money wisely and seek the interest of the ordinary fellow.
We must employ technology in solving this problem. As I said before, there
is absolutely no reason why, using a systems approach, we can’t designed IT
systems that are properly networked and able to accomplish the task for
which they were created. Why is it not possible to get the exact fees one
owes via a computer as soon as a car is shipped? Why not create such a
system? It is no longer acceptable to tell paying customers to either deal
with it or bear with us. One thing we ought to understand, hopefully very
well, is that, investment dollars are really hard to come by. If we don’t
have business acumen and skills to boot, how can we ran our businesses and
government entities? Why can’t we excel in providing excellent customer
services? As it stands, we are really not noted for any pivotal aspect of
business. Just like Brazil is noted for soccer, what can we boast of in the
area of business? We lack basic management skills and no training is in
sight. Even when some have tried hard to provide training, the lessons are
just as quickly thrown to the wind because the claws of corruption has a
vice grip on the conscience and good intentions of even the doves amongst
us.
According to William Raspberry, a Washington post op-ed columnist, “Even if
you have been stung once, it does necessarily make sense to take a stick and
whack the hornet’s nest.” Well, Mr. Raspberry, I am defying your well
intentioned advice, if only for once, so I can whack this nasty hornet’s
nest. And you know what; I intend to whack it again and again with my
Howitzer cannon till the Jihad is won. We must not and cannot allow this
cancer to prevail, let alone metastasize at the harbour. Even custom officers
are fed up with the system and some confided in me the need for change. Mr.
President, instead of weakly spouting off your golden age of do nothing, why
don’t you muster some starch in your spine and act for once. Gather some
political will and act now. The harbour in particular but civil service in
general need serious rework if we are to be taken serious about our
development aspirations and claims. The time to change is now and you have
the authority to knead out this bureaucratic nightmare. After all, you are
in your second term and what do you really have to lose? Act now!!
By Nii Lantey Okunka Bannerman (MSc. ABS BA Bus Admin. Dip Public Admin)
Organization Development Specialist/Consultant (7/12/05)
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