The GST receipt brouhala

The blame game appears to be a hall mark of this regime; nobody is prepared to come forward or own up when things go wrong, no matter how serious the matter may be. It was either someone else’s fault, or “it was Puawui who told me to do this,” only for Puawui to respond with,”It was Dr. Banya who gave the instructions and so forth.”  (Photo: Dr. Sama Banya)

In my days as a minister I often reminded those with whom I worked that while I respected their views which I never hesitated to seek, the ultimate decision rested with me. “Therefore,” I followed up, “if I give a verbal directive with which somebody has some concern, they should protect themselves by minuting back with something like, ‘Minister, at the conclusion of our discussion, you directed that “A” must take precedence over “C”; I simply want to make sure that I understood your directive.” I would be bound to respond with a confirmation or a negation. That way the subordinate would be protected and the minister won’t conclude that his authority or dignity was being imposed upon or that it was being challenged by his Permanent Secretary. Well that was how I did things.

The current exercise of passing the buck will continue ad infinitum unless and until EBK steps in or the ACC takes further action. But by the way the ball is being thrown from one side to the other the whole episode may simply vanish as in an India rope trick. In the meantime, the people who are spending part of their own tax payer’s money must be watching in disbelief.

One of our most distinguished Physician Specialists told me of a conversation he had had with a Ghanaian counterpart who wanted to know the rational of sending medical patients to Ghana for further consultation and treatment. The Ghana colleague confided that in nearly every such case, they did nothing different in procedure or treatment, so why spend all that money and time, he almost queried. It reminds me of my time on the board of the Sierra Leone State Lottery. Among the many anomalies that we discovered on taking over the affairs of the agency was the colossal sum of money that was being spent on printing the Lottery tickets abroad, in this case Switzerland. We decided to reverse the process, but since it INVOLVED SECURITY PRINTING, we could not ask for open bids. Once we confirmed that the Government Printer could not handle it, we asked for selective bids. Of the lot only one company was doing security printing and was in fact doing so satisfactorily for an international bank in a sister West African country. By awarding the contract to the firm, we saved Lotto thousands of dollars on each order and in addition our orders took no more than a fortnight to execute and involved no air freight. Believe me we were far from amused when an international audit firm queried us for not advertising for open tender.

Why did the NRA have to go out of the country to get the services of a security printing firm when there was one or two such firms right under their nose? Is that not where it all started? Christ commanded his disciples to cast their nets just on the other side of the boat and when they did the catch was unimaginable.

Readers of a few newspapers yesterday must have come read with dismay the meanderings of a former senior army officer with the rank of Lt. Colonel under the regime of former President Joseph Saidu Momoh. As an old time medic I would diagnose his condition of schizophrenia with definite delusions. Read Puawui’s analyses in tomorrow’s edition. In the meantime we have had to put up with another trash from 15 Kissy Road about the newspapers alleged physical attack on former President Tejan-Kabbah who headed the ECOWAS Observation mission to the recently conclude Guinea Presidential elections.

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