Picketing, the brain child of political populism

Picketing is defined as "a worker or group of workers who protest outside a building to prevent other workers from going inside, especially because they have a disagreement with their employers" (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/picket).

In recent time this word has strangely and strongly found its way in the Ghanaian diction, it has become a household word, not that alone but also most certain and potent tool used to get the government of the day to wake up from its slumber and act in the interest of the vulnerable citizenry.

It is undisputable that governments over the world are entrusted with resources of a country to plan and use these resources in the Supreme interest of the citizenry, when this golden function is abdicated in part or entirely and left into the hands of a monster called picketing then that country is certainly heading into to a serious abyss.

Since the inception of the 7th government of the 4th republic the usual proactive governance surprisingly appears to be evaporated into the thin air and has paved way for unhealthy picketing syndrome which is now highly rewarding; this country has witnessed picketing by diploma nurses and midwives, a positive results was attained after the rigorous picketing; this was followed by bonded Nurse Assistants (Community Health Nurses and Enrolled Nurses), this also gained a mouthwatering result; bonded Allied Health Professionals also followed suit and were amply rewarded;

245 abandoned doctors used a different strategy akin to picketing by writing an emotional letter to citifm's Bennard Able, and within 24hours their legitimate crying and shouting yielded a very promising fruit; do not forget teacher trainees threatened to picket over their allowance and it was quickly restored; concerned National Service Personnel served a notice that they were preparing to go and picket and before their deadline could reach the government quickly sorted them out.

The list is endless including veterinary doctors, private health trainees, agricultural college students, health insurance providers etc; the most unprecedented and the novelty of these picketing is that some spend days sleeping and cooking at the premises they occupy/picket.

The effect of these picketing is that it destructs normal government business thereby reducing productivity, it equally reduces the integrity of our institutions and subject them to public ridicule both nationally and internationally, it also brings the hard earned image of the office holders and the leader of the country into disrepute.


These knee-jerk responses to serious national issues always throws prudent government policies into a bottomless trash bin, why did the Universal Salary Structure become a very useless tool and government had to resort to all other means including Health Sector Salary Structure and finally this Single Spine Salary Structure? It is all because our governments are populist and cannot absorb pressure or proactively plan about teething national issues; why is that our country experiences huge budget deficits every year especially and more prominently in election years? These are all as a results of populist policies that lack due diligence and only has a filthy objective of satisfying political cronies just to buy vote or influence voting.



The vulnerable public that engage in these act of picketing unfortunately cannot be blamed for this unfortunate culture because they expect their leaders to be truthful to them at all times, for instance if you tell a trainee that I would restore your allowance within the first 100 of assuming office, certainly that trainee has every moral right to picket and drum home their demands after 5 or 6months; if a vice president tells the country in April that over 11,000 health trainees have been cleared financially (https://www.graphic.com.gh/news/general-news/we-have-made-103-achievements-in-100-days-bawumia.html), and the sector minister in February stating that over 8,000 have been cleared financially (http://233livenews.com/2017/03/21/govt-resumes-recruitment-nurses/) (contradictory figures) yet in June and July no health trainee has been officially given appointment letter then it calls for extraordinary measures to drum home their rightful demands as announced to the entire country by the political elites.


When doctors who are trained for 7years and did not receive any allowance during their training period, and most importantly are ready to serve their nation are denied financial clearance and the money used to engage in more expensive unproductive populist ventures like restoration of trainee allowances then of course they have a genuine reason to picket and drum home their demands through unorthodox means. How can some National Service personnel who are serving be ignored by MoH? Meanwhile the same MoH is seriously sorting others because they use those others for political football, so if the answer to these Service personnel would be picketing why not?


I sincerely wish that our government ups it's game and exhibit competency over the job given to them by Ghanaians, they have to clearly distinguish between political talks and actual policy implementation, at best they should just be honest with Ghanaians during electioneering campaign to minimize pressure, this reminds me of what former President John Dramani Mahama said in March 2015 at Bostwana about "dead goat syndrome" (http://www.myjoyonline.com/politics/2015/March-11th/i-have-dead-goat-syndrome-mahama-tells-ghanaians.php) which sadly a section of Ghanaians deliberately twisted it for a political gain, he was certainly referring to this haphazard scheme of things, two years down the lane I think we should commend him for that particular stance, no wonder he copiously said history would vindicate him in December, 2017 (http://citifmonline.com/2016/12/09/history-will-judge-my-contributions-mahama/).

The evidence is already showing that this alteration governance is hurting our economy and we the ordinary citizens would be at the receiving end of these cosmetic and populist governance, just this month (11/10/2017) IMF has just issued a stern warning to Ghana like a father and his "spoilt over pampered child" over revenue mobilization and economic stability (http://thebftonline.com/economy/imf-warns-on-financial-stability/). As a citizen and not spectator, I urge the government to put national interest always over partisan political interest for our collective good.