A portion of our lead story yesterday regarding the fatality originating from a falling wall in Accra said it all about how negligence on the part of officialdom can be costly and even deadly.
A falling wall killed a woman and her son at the Kwame Nkrumah School at Accra Newtown last Thursday. The incident comes on the heels of three letters to the relevant authorities to do something about the situation yielding blanks.
“Ayawaso Central Sub-Metro Director of NADMO, Sylvester Kwakye, admitted to DAILY GUIDE that indeed NADMO was approached on three occasions about the poor state of the school complex and how it posed risk to people”.
The foregone is, of course, an indictment on whoever is responsible for ensuring the safety of citizens especially having been apprised of the deplorable state of the school on three occasions.
The Metro Director at the Accra Metropolitan Assembly was given two reports about the need to take action on the precarious state of the wall, but here too, nothing was done.
The Ayawaso Central Municipality too was informed, yet nothing was done and the fallout is the death of a poor head porter, Kayayo, and her son. This is heart-wrenching news when especially the fatality could have been avoided.
To think that the worse could have happened is another painful thought. It is a school and it can only be imagined what could have happened had the kids been on break and playing around the weak wall. Of course, we would have encountered a national disaster and made avoidable bad press on the international scene. We are already doing so for not being able to reverse the negativities which come with every rainy season in the past years.
The Kwame Nkrumah School in Accra Newtown is an old school and so characteristically left to bask in decay. Nobody cares about carrying out maintenance works on it. After all, it is a public school and as evident from the non-response to the correspondences to the relevant officials about the bad state of the school, nobody cared a hoot.
Those whose negligence led to the fatalities must tell Ghanaians through their superiors why disciplinary action should not be taken against them for their inaction.
We are pained for the loss of lives and unless those responsible are brought to book, we would not be seen to be a country of serious-minded public officials.
While we express gratitude to the Ayawaso Central Constituency MP for his intervention, we nonetheless want those responsible named and shamed. This is unacceptable. He is only stepping in because some officials have been sleeping on their jobs. Waiting for disasters to occur before taking action is ridiculous.
The unknown Kayayo’s people must be identified and compensated for their loss. We cannot continue running state businesses like we are doing. Service is what public officials must offer and not what we are observing.