Features
Sim card re-registration and economic growth (final part)
• Sim re-registration would reduce criminal activities to some extent
Any person who understands why the sim card re-registration exercise is necessary will come to appreciate its value in terms of national security for all people residing in the country.
If it is possible for any group of people to use tricks to deceive business men and women in the country, then we all need to be careful about our safety and security.
This is because without security in the country, the safety of business men cannot be guaranteed and when this happens, the economy would not be able to grow in the way expected.
Furthermore, whenever crimes move high in the country, it puts fear in everyone, making it difficult for many to go about their normal activities.
Peace and security are therefore very important for the good of every country. Criminal activities cannot be totally eliminated from any part of the world.
However, when they are minimised, they help to boost confidence in the economy and thus help both local and foreign investors to go about their duties with ease.
In addition, the confidence they gain encourages them to believe in the system in which they operate since they know that at any point in time, their economic and business interests would be adequately protected by the state.
The question that arises now is “why is the Ministry of Communication and Digitisation seriously committed to ensuring that every SIM card in the country is re-registered?”
The issue of traceability here is very important and it should be possible for the State to trace the source of every call made in this country to enable us know that they are not coming from scammers or tricksters.
If we understand things so well in this way, we can have our peace to go about every business in this country. Any call made in any part of this country, is intended for criminal activities, should be traced from its source by national security officers.
If we are not able to trace the source, then our safety is in jeopardy. This will put us in great danger since criminals will have a field day and engage in all kinds of unpleasant, nefarious activities. Such activities are unproductive and must be discouraged without delay.
This explains why traceability of all calls is very important. It should be possible for us to trace the sources of all calls so that criminals in the country can be weeded out.
In the first place, under the current re-registration exercise, the personal details of every individual is captured. Secondly, the bio-data of the person is also captured.
With the carrying of such data, it becomes easy to trace calls from any part of the country especially when evil intentions can be imputed. As at now, it is not all SIM cards that have been properly registered.
For this reason, criminal activities are still ongoing. To prevent this situation, the Ministry of Communication and Digitisation has come out to say that all SIM cards that have not been properly re-registered will be blocked after November 30 this year.
This means that such unregistered cards cannot be used to make calls or transact business in any way. This exercise is meant to sanitise the system and prevent a situation where unknown SIM cards may be used for some criminal activities.
In the past, it was easy for any person to get a SIM card anywhere and use it to make genuine calls or alternatively use it for criminal activities. When businessmen and women are protected from this criminal activity, it becomes easy for them, as has been pointed out already, to have confidence in the economic system and go about their duties with ease.
This helps to promote business expansion as well as ensuring economic growth and increased welfare for everyone in the country.
When criminal activities escalate, they discourage people from carrying out their business activities with ease. On the other hand, where criminal activities are about nil in this way, business confidence becomes rekindled and this helps many individuals and business organisations to carry out their business operations in the way expected.
This means that in all sectors of the economy, whether in agriculture, health, trade, education or in any other sector, activities move on smoothly and profit margins keep escalating to higher levels. This is what Ghana needs today.
With the implementation of many programmes such as One District One Factory; Agenda 111 under which District and regional hospitals are being built across the country; Planting for Food and Jobs and for Export; and many other programmes that are ongoing, there is the need for every person in the country to know that good policies are being implemented and that we need to protect every person to make everyone feel safe in the country.
If this is the case, then we need to pay serious attention to the SIM card re-registration to guarantee the security and safety of every person irrespective of where you find yourself in the country. This is what the country needs so let each and every one support the SIM card re-registration in our own interest and live above pettiness.
Email address/whatsApp number of author:
Pradmat201@gmail.com (0553318911)
By Dr. Kofi Amponsah-Bediako
Features
Political punches and the Blackman
A live boxing showdown between an Arab champion, Saddam Hussein, and the Western ‘Bazooka,’ George Bush, should be the most spectacular event in boxing and political history.
Most probably, Saddam Hussein will rely more on his thick moustache than his ‘chemical’ upper-cuts. Naturally, the dancing kenkeyweight titlist, George Bush, will turn into a southpaw, floating in the ring, jabbing, ducking and targeting Saddam’s moustache to rip it off once and for all.
Such a boxing show would be one of near equals. But consider for a moment a similar show between the Pride of Pretoria, F. W.de Klerk, and the Hope of South Africa, Oliver Tambo.
Although Tambo is not in the very best of health, he is sure to be a diligent pugilist with all the qualities of a BLACK BOMBER. F. W.de Klerk, the stronger of the two is likely to be cautioned several times for hitting below the belt. Fact is that, de Klerk’s punches are never direct. Perhaps his fists need a binoculars to help target Tambo’s nose.
Oliver Tambo had never been a good friend to South African leaders, especially
Pieter Botha. And for quite some time, Botha has had more than a fair share of Tambo’s political punches till his corner men threw in the towel. Still Botha wanted to fight on although they told him that he needed to be replaced by a clerk-de Klerk.
Today, Oliver Tambo is still fighting on behalf of his people. And gradually, the satanic apartheid regime is crumbling, but piecemeal. I bet, de Klerk’s formula for dismantling apartheid that can be likened to a small ant commissioned to eat a mountain of LOAF. Certainly, it would take a thousand years to complete.
This fact is further underscored when we consider that just recently, leaders of the European Community have agreed to scrap the ban on new investments in South Africa. With this decision, South Africa is going to get some breathing space and the process of disentangling its dreaded stranglehold on the black majority is going to be dead-slow.
The German Foreign Minister, Hans Dietrich Genscher, rationalising the community’s decision, said the lifting of the ban would reward de Klerk for legalising the African National Congress (ANC), freeing its deputy leader, Nelson Mandela, and permitting Oliver Tambo to return to South Africa after thirty years in exile.
In reaction to this, the ANC adopted a resolution calling for sanctions to be maintained, with the stand that the EC’s decision which was against ANC interests. Earlier, during an ANC congress, Oliver Tambo had stated that it was time the ANC reviewed its stand on sanctions against South Africa.
“It is no longer enough to repeat the trite slogans …… we should carefully re-evaluate the advisability of insisting on sanctions given the situation domestically and abroad.”
Apparently, the optimism of the black majority of attaining a wish is gradually becoming tantalising if not illusionary.
As it is now, the European Community’s decision is a pointer to the fact that members of the Community regard the South African whites as their first cousins. And obviously, many Europeans directly or indirectly have commercial interests in South Africa. And how can one punish a brother for so long no matter how recalcitrant he proves to be?
Fact is, covertly or overtly, the apartheid regime is being made to perpetuate till doomsday. No one cares for the black man. The whites will come out openly to condemn the racist regime and go indoors to have plans about how best to strengthen this regime.
Worse atrocities have been visited upon the black man. Since history began chronicling world events, the black man has been at the receiving end of all unpleasantries. He is even cited to have descended from a cursed man called Ham, who according to the Bible derided his father’s nakedness. Quite fallaciously, one child of Ham was said to be black (because of the curse), and became the progenitor of the African race.
It is quite uncertain whether orientals like the Chinese also had some share of the curse to make some of them yellow-skinned.
Anyhow, blacks of the world have suffered a lot, having been made slaves, tortured and abused. In the United States where many blacks became domiciled after the slave trade, they were regarded as second rate citizens. To this very day, they are discriminated against when it comes to job opportunities and prospects for promotion.
AMUSING CONCLUSIONS
They are considered brainless and only fun-loving. In a seemingly very crooked research conducted not far back, the following amusing conclusions were arrived at. Chinese students were said to be studious, European children very ambitious and bright and Negro children were said to like partying and music. Adult Negroes were said to be physically strong with large sexual organs but no brains in their heads.
The Blackman’s culture is described as uncivilised and extremely backward. But let’s come to face it. The white man’s culture teaches him to hate others who are not of his colour. You go to Europe and you would be shocked that some whites would not like to sit in the same bus with you.
When they (Europeans) come to Africa, we are not hostile to them although they’ve once enslaved and brutalised us and continue to discriminate against us. We bear them no grudge. Our culture does not breed hatred for other races. It preaches hospitality and respect for all. Which of these two cultures should be placed higher on the scale of civilisation?
In the US, a white supremacist group named the Ku Klux Klan, have a morbid hatred for blacks and have policies geared towards the elimination of the black race. The neo-Nazis do not like blacks either.
History has it that when Jesse Owens won four Olympic gold medals in Berlin, the Nazi warlord, Adolf Hitler, was gravely embittered.
We are discriminated against in sports, the latest being two dubious penalties awarded against the Indomitable Lions of Cameroun in the match against England in the 1990 World Cup in Italy. Cameroun, as a result, failed to reach the semi-final stage. Africans do not deserve a World Cup.
And quite sadly we allow Caucasians and Anglo Saxons to dictate to us which of our women are beautiful and which are not. We accept their criteria for beauty and allow our women to parade semi naked before them, only to be ridiculed as hairless monkeys, and undeserving of beauty awards.
Year after year, we send our women there to experience the same ordeal and we would never learn to stop that nonsense. Are we not encouraging the whites to go on ridiculing our race?
Caucasians, Orientals and Africans have their own considerations when appraising beauty. Why allow Caucasians to superimpose their idea of beauty on ours.
Shall we always be slaves who never stop to think for a while of their independence?
This article was first published on Saturday, December 22, 1990
Features
Is God a Liar?
I believe the first thought that will occur to anyone who reads the topic of this write-up will be what is going on here? Is this author not committing blasphemy? Recent developments on our political front has made this question relevant because of the impact these developments can have on Christianity.
In fact, a respected Christian leader in the country has commented that, Charismatic Christians seem to have decided to embark on a one way journey to self destruction.
He further commented that Charismatics have desecrated noble titles like Apostle, Bishop etc. to the extent that now if you call yourself a Prophet it is synonymous to a con man. Prophets are supposed to speak the mind of God to his people or his church and therefore when a statement is made by a Prophet claiming “thus saith the Lord” people take it whole heartedly as if God was uttering it directly to them.
Again we believe as Christians that God does not lie according to Numbers 23:19 and other references in the bible, and therefore, when a so called Prophet makes an emphatic statement that it is coming from God and a few years later this same God makes another statement contradicting the first one, then it is legitimate to ask the question “Is God a liar”?
People are beginning to lose trust in men of God because of their utterances and actions. You hear of stories of so called men of God committing adultery, stealing, cheating and all kinds of unpleasant behaviour. Unspeakable things that even unbelievers shy away from are being associated with men in white collar.
When elections are approaching, you hear of all manner of prophesies as to which presidential candidate is going to win the elections. Previously, it used to be prophetic declarations on 31st December Night until a certain Dr Dampare issued an order and suddenly God decided to take a holiday each 31st night in my beloved country, Ghana.
The respected Christian leader I mentioned earlier said, he does not believe that God elects leaders especially in our continent and that if he does, given some of the leaders we have had, then we need to have a conversation with him. I fully agree. How can a God of order and discipline, elect lawless people to be leaders who refuse to hand over power contrary to what their constitution states, when their term of office expires?
If I were a member of the fake prophet’s church, I definitely would quit the church because he has proven to be a charlatan. The Bible makes it clear in Mathew 7:20 that the criteria for determining a person’s status as a Christian is by their fruits. Instead of focusing on spreading the Gospel and showing the unsaved the way of salvation, they have turned themselves into favour seekers.
The current places of church auditoriums of some of these pastors were places of businesses as those of us who are privileged to be old enough, vividly recollect. They sing the praises of leaders and their governments, so they would be favoured with prime locations for their church auditoriums among others. These are what the Bible talks about according to Philippians 3:19 that their God is their belly among others.
Instead of seeking Godly wisdom for the revival of these distressed companies, what they were interested in was the place being given to them and they hypocritically turn around and say let us pray for jobs for the youth.
Some of these so called men of God, demand consultation fees before you can see them and I pity the poor souls who visit such places.
God is not a liar. It is against his nature to lie. He is a spirit of truth. It is rather the Devil who is a liar and the father of lies so if you lead a life of lies, as some of these pastors obviously are doing, then according to the Bible, they are fake.
By Lord Kissi-Mensah