another overdue post from ghana..
the picture is a bit hard to see, but it is of prez. kufour raising the trpphy aboce his head in accra during the trophy tour. i'm not complaining about the ceremony per se, because i was there, and certainly wanted to see the cup, but it raised a few questions for me.
the event was advertised as an opportunity to see the world cup and have your picture taken with it, so one would have thought it would be a one to two hour ceremony at MOST. i was very wrong, firstly it started 2 hours ( yes, 2 hours! ) late, for reasons i will leave you to guess. after that we were taken through a series of performances by the Black Stars supporters group and the Winneba Youth choir, a film on Ghana's football history, a special 3D film on the world cup and the trophy tour...and speeches by coca cola executives, the president, the list goes on...
by the time we finally got round to seeing the cup, we had been there 3.5 hours and counting.
i don't take issue with the ceremony, and how it was organized. not even really with the fact that it started late. did i mention the fact that apart from the president, practically every minister of state and deputy minister was there as well??? basically for at least 4 hours that morning, none of them did any of the work they're in office to do for the country. i mean seeing the trophy was nice, but was it worth that much? if it had been some sort of investors conference, or strategizing session...maybe an update on each person's vision for ghana in 2006, just something which might bring some benefit to the country somewhere along the line it wouldn't have been as bad. but a loss of that many hours of productivity ( multiply all the ministers, deputy ministers there by the number of hours) all to see the world cup trophy? that is a hard sell. granted i did see one minister leave before the ceremony was over, but that was it. and this on top of a holiday season in which for the previous 2.5 weeks every other day was a holiday ( or so it seemed) sure there is christmas, but then there is boxing day, and then another day because christmas fell on the weekend, and there's new year's, and another day because new year's fell on the weekend. and then who workd on the 24th anyway? and oh what's one more day at the end of the year?
i'm thinking we need to take another look at productivity, and the reasons for which we lose productivity. at a GDP per capita of under $400, maybe only the Minister of Education and Sports should have been there?
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