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Opinions of Wednesday, 10 July 2013

Columnist: Kassim, Alabani

RE: "High Risk" Ghanaian Citizens must pay £3000?

Having read this interesting piece by Amponsah, John at ghanaweb.com I was left wondering what could have been responsible for Ghana?s classification as a ?high risk? country because the statistics do not give meaning to such classification. Amponsah?s question remains relevant; what really is "high risk"? How did Ghana make it onto the "high risk" list? .Deducing from what I read, I will be far from wrong if I qualify what has been done as one of the many ways by which the U.K government is discriminating against weaker countries especially Ghana.

However, the most important lesson for us to learn from our ?high risk? status must not elude us. In fact, some of the major reasons why we travel to the U.K includes the issue of seeking greener pastures or better named ?meaningful jobs?, seeking health care services and education. It is high time we put our shoulders to the wheel to develop our own country. With genuine commitment to national development, Ghana can build a first class university that will be at par with any university anywhere in the world. If this happens our upcoming generations will not need to travel to the U.K for university education let alone pay a bond of £ 3000.

Ghana have to be a little more serious with the question of development, it is left to us whether to develop our selves and country or to open up for neo-colonial exploitation and humiliation. Our Political leaders have to realize that we can only start to build a serious country by sacrificing. Ghana can have first class universities and hospitals if our politicians are ready to do just a little sacrifice by forfeiting many of the allowances and gratias they take. As a nation we must know and accept that we are at a stage of take off in our national development; a stage that requires hard work and sacrifice from leadership. Mean while we have a class of politicians who want to live as if they are in a high mass consumption society. They want to have all the luxury they see in U.K and other places. They want same comfort and some times encomiums. We cannot be singing empty songs when we very well know that our educational institutions are ill equipped, our hospitals are ailing and much of our public services are clear examples of failure.

The people of U.K have the right or power if you like to do whatever they are currenting doing but we have to know that it is suicidal for us to expect that they will always undertake actions or policies that will enhance our development. Having said this, I wish to tell Terasa May and David Cameron, that Ghanaians are still waiting to know why they have become a ?high risk? country to the U.K.

By

Kassim, Alabani , B.A (Tamale), M.Sc (Cape Coast)

P O Box 5 Bisco TL, Tamale.

Tel: 020 7352420

Email: kassimalabani@yahoo.com