Who pays the price

With pain I recall Wednesday 7th November, 2012. If

memory serves me right I was preparing for my last study session of the week

since my “weekend” starts on Wednesday evening. Back to the morning of that

Wednesday, at exactly 9:30 am the rumour making the rounds was that a

six-storey building housing the Melcom mass retail shop in the suburbs of

Achimota had collapsed and that people were trapped beneath the rubble. I must

admit that on that morning I didn’t have the benefit of watching/listening to

“credible news” of any kind be it in the print and/or electronic media. As fate

would have it, it happened exactly a month to the 2012 General Elections and

crucially at an important time of campaigning hence the blame game was played

fully and “properly”. The sitting President, then the NDC Presidential

candidate in the 2012 general elections had to stop his campaigning in the

Northern parts of the country to attend to the disaster and yet his detractors

and political opponents couldn’t help but to associate the President with the

disaster by virtue of the fact that his name and that of the departmental store

both start with an “M”.



Tellingly, political promises followed. Firstly, the

President said “Whoever is responsible for this negligence here will pay a

price” in a media briefing after a short tour of the scene of the accident.

Secondly, the then NPP Member of Parliament for Okai Koi North, Mrs. Elizabeth

Sackey, disclosed to Joy News that she has reliably been informed, when she

enquired from the building inspector for the area, that the building has no

permit and she further promised “…,So I told him that I am going to take them

on as a Member of Parliament for the area”. Thirdly, the mayor of Accra

Metropolitan Assembly, Alfred Vanderpuye confirmed on Joy FM’s Top Story

Wednesday, hours after the incident, that the six-storey building has no

permit. He also said his outfit has been combing Accra for the past two years just

to find buildings without permits, “but how we missed this one, we are going to

find out”. On that same morning, the Melcom group wrote on their facebook page

“We are doing everything possible to see that help reaches those who need it.

Our heartfelt condolences and deepest sympathies goes to the families of those

who may have lost their lives", and finally we turn to our President who

is reported to have given a strong indication that the person whose negligence

caused the collapse of the shopping complex would be dealt with.



Fast forward to November 12, 2012 and the BBC News

had this headline ‘Melcom shop collapse in Ghana: Search for bodies ends’ and

the news continued as follows “Rescue efforts at the multi-storey shopping

centre that collapsed in Ghana's capital, Accra, last week have ended,

officials have said. The final death toll was 14, not 18 as initially reported

by rescuers, while 67 people survived, the officials said. Faulty construction

has been blamed for Wednesday's collapse of the Melcom store, which opened

earlier this year. The owner of the building and the local government

official in charge of building standards have been detained.” Internationally,

a similar scenario with a death toll 100 times that of the Melcom disaster and

with approximately 400 times the number of survivors. One may ask what happened

next? Political promises? Actions backing the words? The main question here is

who paid the price in Bangladesh after the Rana Plaza disaster? Similar

scenario and I quote the head of the Bangladeshi Fire Service and Civil

Defence, Ahmed Ali Khan when he said; of the 8-storey building “the upper 4

floors had been built without a permit”. In the immediate aftermath of the

collapse, the Dhaka city development authority filed a case against the owners

of the building and the five garment factories operating inside it. It didn’t

end there as four days after the building collapsed, the owner of the Rana

Plaza, Sohel Rana, was arrested at Benapole, on the

Indo-Bangladeshi border, in Jessore District by

security forces and on 10th June, seven inspectors were suspended and accused

of negligence for renewing the licenses of garment factories in the building

that collapsed. A host of international garment and/or clothing stores severed

their ties with garment factories in Bangladesh citing the slavery-like working

conditions in these factories but certainly we all agree that all these actions

were prompted by the collapse of the building.



The

price has been paid, not only by the owner of the building and factories housed

within the building but by garment factories across the country. Many textile

factories had to shut due to unrests in the immediate aftermath of the collapse

and many buildings were closed down in what the Government described as

enforcing stricter regulations with regards to buildings and structures in

Bangladesh.



Of course families of the 14 victims

of the Melcom disaster who lost their lives have received GH¢10,000 each from

government and there are is the Melcom Disaster Fund established by the AMA to

be disbursed to the families of the 14 victims anytime the fund gets to

GH¢100,000 thanks to the seed money of GH¢30,000, GH¢10,000 and GH¢25,000

respectively from the AMA, Zoomlion and the management of Melcom but the

question that lingers in the minds and hearts of people is will that be enough

price to pay? Is it always about the money? Measures must be enforced to make

sure such a disaster does not befall us ever again. One might point out that

two people were arrested, building owner Nana Nkansah Boadu Ayeboafo and the

Municipal Head of the Works Department of the Accra Metropolitan Assembly

(AMA), Karl Henry Clerke in the 24 hours after the collapse but their being

granted a bail within the next 24 hours also shows that clearly we are waiting

for justice to take its rightful course. On the basis of the President’s

promise, I and indeed all Ghanaians are waiting for those who are going to pay

the price and secondly I am waiting to hear parliament raise that issue even

though the current MP for Okai Koi North constituency happens to be a different

one to the MP that made the earlier promise late last year but one might argue

that since the ex-MP and the current MP are from the same party, the issue

shall be raised in parliament as promised by the ex-MP. I for one would love to

see the issue raised in parliament by the current MP of the Okai Koi North

regardless of party affiliations since we have a democratic government that is

to see to the welfare of all Ghanaians without any prejudice to racial, religious

and political affiliations. 14 human lives have been sacrificed and no amount

of money is enough to replace that and safety at the work place is what we

demand as tax-paying hard working Ghanaians. The AMA boss is yet to come good

on his promise of finding out how they missed the Melcom Building in their

search and identification of buildings without permit and the Melcom group is

yet to honour the memory of the 14 dead workers. I have consistently made it

clear that money is not enough and Melcom needs to immortalise the dead so that

it serves as a remainder to what might befall us as a nation whenever we focus

on making money at the expense of safety at the workplace.



The

whole of Ghana awaits and unanimously we continue to ask “Who Pays the Price?”







References



http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=255667



http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=255671



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-20280712



http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=257290



http://www.ghanaweb.com/GhanaHomePage/NewsArchive/artikel.php?ID=257255



http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/16/us-bangladesh-collapse-idUSBRE95F0I220130616



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Savar_building_collapse



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-22513861



By Mohammed Haruna-Rasheed.aronzy@hotmail.com