Accra, Ghana, June 28, 2020//-Over the course of last week, I read on social media networks with several of my friends sharing a post of a man who lost his wife because of the negligence of healthcare workers on duty at the Greater Accra Regional Hospital (Ridge), Ghana.

https://africaneyereport.com/understanding-negligence-and-responsibility-an-observation/ 

I also read comments on the post and other platforms that I subscribe to.

One key observation I saw in the reposting and comment sections was that doctors and nurses were irresponsible in the performance of their duties and that amounted to negligence.

Although I respect their sentiments I equally think they have missed the point because in this country NOBODY IS RESPONSIBLE FOR ANYTHING.

Oh yes, I will show you why. And I’ll like to proceed with generalization though it’s subject to critique.

First of all, we as Ghanaians have lost the moral right to complain that others do not perform their duties well since most of you do worse at your workplaces every day. So why are you angry? Or is it because it doesn’t involve direct death?

Let me make it simple here, anytime you make someone to wait for a service more than the time allowed, you have partially murdered that person (In East African accent for emphasis).

Because death is simply your clock stopping. And life is equal to the number of seconds, minutes you will live on earth, thus life = time.

So if someone takes 30 minutes of your time the person has murdered you by 30 minutes. This may not make sense to a lot of you but it reduces your lifespan on earth and that’s even more dangerous than the entire clock stopping. Being partially dead is dangerous than being dead.

Secondly,  in Ghana, NO ONE is RESPONSIBLE FOR THEIR ACTIONS. This point must be emphasized because a lot of the time resources meant for making the lives of the less privilege better are stretched out to personal use but we haven’t seen you angry but we have seen you trivialize the issues by calling it ’politics’ to which I am still confused on the real meaning of the term.

Thirdly, policies increase the standard of living of a society which builds into the life expectancy rate. However, oftentimes, policies have been implemented halfway through and projects abandoned.

Yet we haven’t seen the level of anger expressed against policymakers and implementing agencies as the post received.

The result is poor utilization of public resources and blunted disregard for the plight of many whom these policies are intended for.

When that happens, the would-be beneficiaries’ lives are shortened because they are half dead. What more can be dangerous than being dead and alive (have you watched the “walking dead”)?

Imagine how that movie is and you wearing the shoes of those who the intended policy is to address. That’s exactly how those people look like in such circumstances.

Fourthly, I have travelled across the length and breadth of Ghana from Upper West in the North to Western North in the south, people still fetch water from streams yet we don’t seem to be bothered. Five million Ghanaians are without safe drinking water but you all know that ’water is life’.

Yet you’re not angry enough. I believe that we need to be consistent in being angry at least that serves a useful purpose. Not picking the issues and calling out healthcare workers to be RESPONSIBLE.

For that to happen, first, we must hold every sector in our SOCIAL STRUCTURE accountable. Because it’s systemic attacking one and leaving others is counterproductive.

Fifthly, we see discrimination in our society, offices, and institutions yet we don’t have the moral conscience to condemn but we are quick to call out doctors and nurses for unprofessional behaviour. That’s hypocrisy, you’re not solidarizing with victims of injustice.

A lot of us have been victims before because we decided to call out evil in our line of duties. It will shock you to know how much people have been treated because they dare to expose what others see normal. However, we won’t fear God and fear man at the same time. It’s impossible.

Sixth, the negligence of a nation to the many underprivileged is mass murder. Every life matters.

For us to be able to defeat negligence in all facets of our society, we must begin to be responsible and hold others to account for their behaviour no matter who they are.

I know this may not go down well with some of you but I do hope that the few who will read will understand it.

But let me end by quoting Martin Luther King Jr below:

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” ? Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from the Birmingham Jail.

By Juliana A. Abane, PhD
Lecturer, Management Studies Department of University of Mines and Technology (UMaT), Tarkwa, Ghana

Email: abanejulie@gmail.com