The late former Vice President Paa Kwasi Amissah-Arthur
It is important when interrogating our national challenges not to overlook the dilapidated ambulance service bequeathed us for analysis.
This has become necessary following the late Paa Kwesi Amissah-Arthur’s episode at the Air Force Base, Burma Camp, Accra recently and the nauseating developments thereof.
It requires an efficient human shock absorbing system to live in this country. The nonsense is just too much. The incumbent government inherited an ambulance service which is anything but functional. Even when so-called ambulances were imported by the former government to address the drawback, they displayed glaring deficiencies such as the absence of gadgets which differentiates an ambulance from an ordinary vehicle. If cynics decide to call them hearses and not ambulances, they can be pardoned because they are more primed for conveying the dead than the living or those in emergency situations.
We would have thought that the tendency to over invoice and to make so much money from any transaction on behalf of the state by government appointees in the previous government would be spared matters of health. The scandal about the ambulances has proven otherwise. We have been reminded about the Gambian reparation for the murdered Ghanaians which was squandered in the name of a so-called unverifiable funeral by the NDC government for the deceased. Even the dead are not spared the NDC impropriety.
In spite of the foregone realities, elements in the NDC turn around to spew rubbish about an ambulance service still manned by their appointee.
If they think that we have forgotten about this aspect of their bad governance they are wrong. The ambulance service is still in the state in which they left it even as efforts are on now to change the face of this critical link in the health delivery system.
Had the NDC bequeathed a functional ambulance system after being in power for so long, perhaps a better means of conveying the late former Vice President would have been available on the fateful day.
It is unacceptable that one of the errand boys of the former President would use harsh words on a traditional ruler and stretch the nonsense to insinuate that the chief is seeking popularity.
These boys who former President Jerry Rawlings described as babies with sharp teeth find it difficult or even impossible to conduct themselves with civility. We could pardon them for the deficiency because they are not used to showing deference to elders and there is reason for that.
Civility, like charity, is an attribute acquired from home. Those who do not have the opportunity of staying in organised homes end up losing this attribute and sadly becoming reckless in their remarks or even relationship with others in society.