Examples of structural violence include poverty, hunger, racism, illiteracy, and inaccessibility to adequate health care. To eradicate this structural violence, Galtung calls for ‘positive nonviolence’ which requires the people to do more than refraining from harming others.
When a man’s end is near, he takes decisions that further deepen his woes. His thoughts are mangled, his actions are reversal of what they are intended to be, his inactions tend to be the preferred.  His desire to hold onto power is further aggravated by equally witless hangers on, whose crave for power and wealth are dependent on him, and whose advice as well are tailored to meet their hidden agenda rather than the collective good of society and the leader himself. The world abounds with so many leaders who lost face with their people in both historical and contemporary times because they did what pleased the few powerful around them rather than what pleased the majority.
I must state that oftentimes, I sympathize with President John Dramani Mahama, a very good friend of mine in times of yore, (I still see him as a friend but I am not sure whether I am still his friend), when I listen to him on the radio or the T.V., his demeanour looks so piteous and his gestures and deliveries as well, so dispirited. He is a leader who has lost it, and conscious of how history will judge him and his descendants, is doing everything to reverse a very bad situation, which in reality, is extremely difficult for him at this stage. In the process, he deepens the problems he intends to solve.
His promises to the citizenry in the past and the numerous assurances have not materialized in many instances. He presides over an unprecedented unemployment among the youth as our institutions of training continues to churn out young vibrant determined people ready to expend their energies towards nation building and securing a good future in their old age. This is not to say that unemployment is only at the time of President Mahama, it has always been with us for varying reasons, among them are unskilled labour, training and skills acquisition that do not match with the existing industrial and commercial needs and limited opportunities.
What has worsened the situation is the fact that the traditional areas of easy accessibility to jobs after training have been blocked by the government, viz, teaching and the nursing sectors of social delivery. Consequently, scores of thousands of young people who have been trained to deliver these services stay at home for years without jobs in addition to the shrinking commercial and industrial sectors which are suffering because of difficult fiscal regime and the excruciating electricity deficiencies that have stayed with us for four continuous years.
Government’s mid-year financial review presented to Parliament last Monday did not inspire hope in the economy because the Finance Minister did not give any indications of addressing the key challenges affecting this nation. The Minister says that capital expenditure in the budget for 2016 is going to go down by GH¢284 million, service provision to the public will also see a cut of GH¢410 million, pensions and gratuities will go down by GH¢293 million and disbursements to NHIA will also go down by GH¢19.6 million.
Surely, if expected revenues are not met to finance planned capital and social services delivery, the most sensible thing to do is to cut down on the planned programmes if government is to avoid deficit financing. However, there are still certain sectors of our social lives that will suffer seriously, if the impact of such cuts is not well managed. The cuts in the services, pensions and the NHIA sectors are likely to inflict more pains on the already suffering people of this country.
We all know that the Conference of Heads of Assisted Secondary Schools (CHASS) has told Ghanaians that the next academic year is not likely to re-open because government owes the schools and the schools owe their suppliers. Indeed as I write, SHSs in the northern half of this country who depend solely on government subventions for their survival are on the verge of shutting down because of funding problems. Hospitals are likely to run out of basic everyday supplies because of the cut in funding, government agencies will not be functional because logistics for their work will not be available.
Already health delivery institutions, both private and public who operate on the policy of the National Health Insurance and deliver their services to their patients are not paid, the NHIA is indebted to the health institutions for months. The decision to cut NHIA expenditure by GH¢19.6 million will further worsen the plight of the service providers which will consequently lead to poor service delivery to the patients. The long term effects on the health of the people is obvious.
The Minister bemoaned the fall in tax revenues which dropped by 6.4 percent of projections, while non-tax revenues also fell by 22.5 percent. He went on ‘in addition, not all anticipated dividends from state-owned agencies were realized’ while disbursements of grants from donor partners were generally on track, only falling short of 0.1 percent. This is an indication of how badly this economy has been managed. We cannot collect taxes effectively from within as against efficient disbursements of ‘free monies’ by donor partners.
One would have expected the Finance Minister to have been very candid in telling Ghanaians and the world, the reasons behind his inability to collect his projected revenues. There seems to be some contradictions in the position of the Minister as presented to Parliament, in my view. Having told us the revenue shortfalls and the decision to cut spending in specific sectors, particularly the service sectors, he is asking Parliament to allow him to spend a revenue of GH¢ 1.9 billion derived from levies imposed on the energy sector.
In the first place, the revenue shortfalls are as a result of the underperformance of both the commercial and industrial sectors of the economy because of the seemingly intractable electricity problems the nation has had to live with for four continuous years, as I have already alluded to above. Taxes are derived from incomes genuinely made through various economic activities engaged by individuals, group of individuals and corporate bodies. If a very major economic factor as electricity is in short supply as well as being extremely expensive where available, then businesses suffer and tax payments are affected.
In spite of the shortfalls in revenues, the government has made a windfall revenue from the same dying energy sector to the tune of almost GH¢2 billion. In dollar terms, the government has had about US$500 million within the last six months from taxes from the energy sector alone. It is amazing that in the face of crippling electricity problems which are the result of government’s indebtedness to suppliers of the raw materials needed to generate electricity- government owes N-Gas in Nigeria as well as Ghana Gas for the supply of gas which has consequently led to short delivery of the product to generate electricity and crude oil imports, government is silent on this.
Any serious government, faced with the problem of electricity, particularly in an election year would invest that money into paying off those we owe in the electricity sector so we can get the raw materials to ensure that normalcy is restored in this critical sector of our development. With sufficient electricity, industry will produce to its maximum capacity, commerce will grow, agriculture will also pick up and the nation would be the better for it, incomes would be generated by individuals, groups and corporate bodies and taxes would be paid.
The government does not seem to care about this suffocating problem which contributes to the low GDP growth generally, instead, the government is planning to borrow to build another power barge that will cost the tax payer huge sums in the years to come. The Mahama administration does not seem to run the economy with the nation’s own resources. Anything good that this government has done is from borrowed resources. What we generate on our own is misused. The government is not careful about the taxes we pay to it.
Daavi, shoot me three tots.