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Development and the holiday mentality
E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Ghanadot

We celebrate our achievements to date with holidays. Thus, today, July 1st, is our Republic Day. Then there is Independent Day and the funeral days, not counting other celebrative days. That must add up to a lot of non-working days in a year.

I was talking to one of Ghana’s brains the other day about the subject of holidays and he gave me what I must describe as a revealing insight to how many unproductive days we spend in the year as holidays.

He said, “Don’t count your regular calendar holidays. That’s a given so there is no need to worry about that. More will be added as we accumulate new landmarks.”

At the mention of landmarks, I heaved a sigh of relief since February 24 is not yet a holiday. The country is waiting to see if June 4th will be added as a point of reference for coups celebrations.

But back to my brainiac. He said there are 52 weeks in a regular year and seven days in the week. His theory was, out of the seven days five are supposed to be working days, but in reality only three achieve that status.

I understood. Start with Fridays which are loaded with anticipation of the weekend activities to come - the weddings, and the funerals to attend. Depending on the distance and the traffic pattern, Fridays may be a good time to start your journey.

And Thursdays are usually burdened by anticipations for Fridays. They have their own encumbrances, since those to be left behind to man the bureaucracies on Friday would spend time this day to plot how to dodge the work load to come on Friday, a day when even the most intrepid would be overburdened with work.

There is also the fact that some of our holidays tend to be complex, multi-faceted and unscheduled, given the religious and tribal nature of our society. The Church outings, the rites and the festivals (Kpo Dziemo, Homowo, Aboatsire, Retreats) tend to demand more days from our work week.

At this stage you may wonder what the impact is on our society when a tiny fraction of the population takes off on weekdays for funeral celebrations or other activities. To help understand, you need to start by thinking that a minute fraction of the population man our bureaucracies, therefore, any unscheduled void in work schedule has its own set of repercussions.

I saw a police man berating a superior for not allowing him to attend the funeral of his brother. His job at the security point at that moment came next to his ability to pay his final respect to his brother. His replacement had to be pulled off from somewhere else.

Then, of course, he would not be the only relative of the dead. There might be others, some with responsibilities that could fall within the same or larger bureaucracies, either in the police force, army or government. Remember the government is the largest employer in Ghana. And they will all be at the same funeral for the departed brother.

Once an infinitesimal section of the bureaucracy is touched with absenteeism, a whole line of societal needs get impacted. A citizen, unless he or she is a cynic, has no reason to suspect what may be happening within a certain bureaucracy in terms of production until he or she shows up at that office.

I had the experience some years ago of needing to collect an express package, that was sent from abroad, from the Post Office. I was told when I showed up that the key to the room the package was kept could not be found. The man in charge had taken off for a funeral the Friday before and would not be back till Tuesday.

My inability to secure the important package that day was not as disappointing as the nonchalance with which the Post Office help delivered the news: I was the odd man out for not understanding that it was necessary for the store room to be shut for the reason stated!

I didn’t get my package that day. Not even on the Tuesday promised. The recovery of whatever the package contained had to be delayed, whether it was time sensitive, health critical or not!

The key to all this is that we work less than we think we do in Ghana. We need to adjust our holiday mentality towards development.

Consider the days towards Christmas and New Year. If there were a scale that could accurately gauge the national work effort during this period, it would show a drastic drop to a fifth of the normal work day’s output. It is not unusual for the high season’s celebration to start as early as the 19th of December. Of course, the 26th is Boxing Day. So who would want to work for the three days left before the 1st of the year in our current holiday enjoyment culture?

I had a need once to clear a container at Tema on a day that fell on December 18th. I was not able to do so until the first week of the New Year.

For those in charge of promoting more holidays to commemorate our meager achievements, there is the need to know that we need more days for work in order to develop. Let our next holiday appointment be made to celebrate WORK. Trade the next holiday for a weekend day to celebrate WORK AND HAPPINESS.

E. Ablorh-Odjidja, Publisher www.ghanadot.com, Washington, DC, July 1, 2009


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