Ghana Day 30

Man was I tired today.

It was the first day where there’s been lots of rain going on when I’m supposed to be leaving, so I decided to be a wimp and stay inside until the worst was passed. I’m not sure I could have gotten a cab anyway (or wanted to be in one that was moving through such hard rain). I was greeted at work with a paper that contained my story about the minister being “grilled”, which was pretty exciting (although again not on the website).

The interesting part of parliament today (not the part I wrote on, which was about irrigation and water runoff) was a discussion I did not actually think was newsworthy since it addressed something that happened in January. Foolish of me to think matters got resolved satisfactorily while they were still news.

So what happened in January is that the NDC came to power and got rid of 30ish foreign service officers who had recently been hired by the NPP, replacing them with other people. Now at the time, this story was added to several others about clientelism and NDC taking advantage of its regained power to restore its supporters to posts. (At least apparently that’s what the Guide said.) From what I gather, the NDC did not refute the allegations well or at all. I didn’t know that, I figured obviously if they had info they’d make it public.

So that’s why I was surprised when the Ministry for Foreign Affairs was brought out and he gave a super long speech about what happened. There had been 30 positions to fill, and 400ish applicants. They all took a written test, and the 157 top scorers got interviews. Of those, 30 were recommended. But it turns out NPP did not accept these recommendations, because after the recommendation the Minister ordered that only 11 of them be kept, and the spots were instead given to others 22 people who I think did not make the final 30 and 7 more who did not make interviews. Also, obviously, instead of filling 30 positions they filled 40.

So the real question is, why were these massive irregularities not immediately clarified? It was in the government’s power and interest to do it, but it did not come out until an NPP MP of all people called on the minister to say what had happened to the original group. That was a backfire if I ever I saw one. I’m just astounded at the failure of the government’s PR group.

In other news, the breaking story for tomorrow is that the minister who bought the tractor at 10% of the price says the paper got it wrong and that he had paid the other 90% at a previous time. Except apparently he paid all of this for 5 tractors (of which he shouldn’t have been able to buy any), so he bought each at 20%. Really, government of Ghana? You suck at this.

Tomorrow is my last day at the Guide, so hopefully I can pester some people into talking to me at the very last minute. I feel like I’ve learned a lot but at the same time haven’t accomplished much in terms of real research.