Features
DStv, Telcos vs Consumerism
Have you ever paid for an item, got home only to realise that item was defective? Then you took it back and you were told once you took it away, nothing could be done about it and you felt dejected.
You bought power from our own Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) and suffered a power outage half of the time.
The experiences enumerated above can be very frustrating, not so? Or you went to a spot and asked for a bottle of Coca Cola and the steward brought you a Pepsi Cola instead.
In their minds they are all Cola, no? Then you send your ward to the butchers to purchase mutton and they bring beef home. You go to have the stuff changed only to be met with insults.
Service providers who you paid upfront will deliver a below-par service and get you angry and frustrated. We suffer in silence because many of these are monopolies who do not care about their clients/customers.
You will understand this if you subscribe to DStv bouquets. All that gets to you when you are watching your favourite channel and cumulus clouds gather.
The signals go off and you scratch your head in utter dismay until the clouds dissipate or after the rains have come and gone. DStv will not compensate you for the hours of lost signal.
What comes on your screen is, “There is no signal. This may be due to bad weather or faulty connection in the installation.”
At a point, I called their Customer Service and the lady I spoke to was frank enough to tell me they have no technology to avoid this occurrence. I cannot fault the poor employee, but this does not make any sense. In New York where rain clouds are darker and thunder claps seem to blow your eardrums, satellite television signals do not get interrupted when it rains.
Thunders do not clap in our parts; they only rumble mostly and are not as severe as in the temperate regions, yet satellite signals drizzle once weather itself drizzles rainwater.
The simple answer is that consumer rights do not work in our parts and we do not get angry with service providers enough, especially since some of them do not have competition in the marketplace.
Multichoice, managers of DStv, do not seem minded to invest in technology to keep their clients served irrespective of whatever the weather condition is.
The responsibility of protecting television sets from lightning must rest with the individual owner, not the service provider.
Every Ghanaian seems to own one cellphone or another. This undoubtedly makes life a lot easier for us. But then it is worrying to call a number and the response is that the number you are trying to reach is either switched off or is unavailable.
Many hours later you get through and the person tells you their phone was never off. What accounts for this must be explained by the Telcos.
You call an MTN number and you hear, “The AirtelTigo number you have dialed cannot be reached at this moment. Please, call back later.” AirtelTigo, when you dialed an MTN number? I have a number of MTN numbers especially, and at times I call one from another and I am either told the number cannot be reached or that the number does not exist. How come, when the two phones sit on my table near each other? Can our Telcos explain this?
Methinks the agency responsible for communications should come up with a legislative framework that makes it mandatory for every call to come with identification so as to eliminate scammers in the mobile telephony system, except perhaps numbers of national security interest. In other jurisdictions even calls to landlines come with the Identity of the caller.
Also, numbers patched with the Ghana Card must of necessity reflect when the bearer makes a call. This has the potential to eliminate fraudsters.
It beats my mind that numbers I have not acquired could appear on my Ghana Card as mine. Now with Artificial Intelligence making the waves, only goodness knows what tomorrow may bring.
So far, it is only the Glo network that registers incoming calls even when the recipient’s phone is off. I have not noticed this with the others.
Another annoying phenomenon is when you buy an item, paid for it and after having your receipt, it is stated at the bottom that goods purchased are not returnable. I wonder who came up with this stupidity. I do not think this can stand a test in law, unless there is a bold display of this edict that cannot escape the attention of the customer so that they are aware before making any purchases, otherwise they have a right to return goods they are dissatisfied with.
Having stated all the above brings me to Consumerism in Ghana. Attempts have been made to form consumer groups but those charged with the responsibility of legislating on consumer concerns do not seem to know what to do or are just indifferent. I was a member of a Consumer Protection Movement of Ghana in the late 80s but no matter how hard we tried, our efforts fell on deaf ears.
Consumerism is a big thing in many countries the world over, but it looks like our leaders here do not have a clue as to what Consumerism is all about. The fact that Ghana has a Standards Authority must be the impetus to couch legislation to protect consumers.
In many jurisdictions almost every product is covered by warranty, except perishable consumables which are themselves covered by standards. So, what sense does it make for me to buy an item here only to read that once I have purchased and paid it cannot be returned? How about if the product turned out to be defective?
But can they be blamed? If those elected to take care of us and protect us from capitalist cheats are looking elsewhere, who would not take undue advantage of us? This, of course, is no reason for corporate laxity.
Consumer satisfaction must be the driving principle of goods and service providers because, after all, without consumers no enterprise can flourish. Monopolies must not make a fool of their clients and our government owes us a duty to protect our wellbeing at all times.
*Writer’s email address:*
*akofa45@yahoo.com*
By Dr Akofa K. Segbefia
Features
The West African Samba dance
I was in sixth form! Precisely, I was in lower sixth, bubbling with enthusiasm for life. Incidentally, I wasn’t particularly a good dancer but liked watching others dance. When my pal Billy (Butter) did the ‘old man boogie,’ dance, he did so with passion, with contortions and distortions of the human frame. He often needed artificial respiration after a good dance.
Old man Boogie was the dance form adopted at the time. The more you danced like a bony and fragile old man, the more you got applauded. It was fashionable at the time to go to disco with a walking stick to simulate an 80-year-old boogeyman.
On the disco dance floor, everyone was crumbling over and if you didn’t know what was in vogue at the time, you’d be tempted to order an ambulance to cart the entire gang of dancers to the nearest hospital to check their sugar levels. No doubt, you were likely to mistake for old diabetics lapsing into coma on the dance floor.
The Old man Boogie did not last very long. Soon it was replaced with ‘dog’. The dancer was expected to have the men mentality of a dog, and that included baring teeth and ‘pissing’ with one leg raised. When you saw Korkorti on the floor, you thought he was directing traffic with his left leg.
FRENZY
The ‘dog’ gave way to ‘cat’, a frightening choreographic innovation that put the ladies to flight. If dog produced vampires, cat engendered tigers on stage, complete with claws to show for it. The ladies were not brave enough to encounter large human cats in a frenzy, boogeying to funk. They simply fled!
Finally ‘horse’ arrived on the dance floor and you could see Ghanaians galloping with care-less abandon. What saved the situation was the advent of break-dance which shortly superseded the era of freestyling captured in the musical movie “The Music Machine’, starring Gerry Sundquist and Pati Boulaye, a Nigerian performer.
Break-dance brought home an exciting dance variety with equally exciting medical problems. Youngsters began spinning on their heads and broke their necks. They were put in collar and never tried it again.
All the above mentioned dance forms were amply exhibited last Saturday when the Black Stars went on a demolition exercise in Cape Verde.
The 4-0 hammering reflected the level of determination of the Stars to get to Germany in 2006 to showcase samba made in Sikaman.
Soon after the victory, ECG went on ‘strike.’ The nation was plunged into darkness. I heard someone say the power off was deliberate to tone down the celebration, lest people drunk themselves to death. I wondered whether anyone needed electric power to drink himself to death. The lights came on at last.
I quickly drove through parts of Tema. Celebrations were not mass, but pockets of celebrants amply typified the general mood.
CARNIVAL
A group of about eight youngsters apparently charged beyond measure, with akpeteshie running through their veins and arteries, organised a mini-carnival from Site 14 and took to the streets. “God bless our home-land Ghana… they sang the Black Stars cheer song, while hopping like delighted kangaroos. Others were dancing like cats, others like horses.
The beer bars in Tema overflowed with booze. Huge loudspeakers were mounted at Emefa Bar, Site 14, to begin a night of music, booze and chops. Khebab stands smoked freely as sausages and suya were dished out hot, charcoal-grilled.
My wife had gone to Lome, Togo for the weekend with the kids. And what she saw marvelled her. The Togolese national team hitherto known for its disastrous performances suddenly came alive and surprised their own selves. In the final qualifying game, they came back twice to beat Congo in a spectacular display of skills and artistry.
The rain was pouring in sheets in Lome but the celebrants hit the streets in carnival fashion. My little daughter joined them in the rain. When I heard it, I was angry. Why allow the little girl to join in the fanfare?
My wife explained that the situation was so spontaneous that everybody was overwhelmed. Every kid was on the street dancing in the carnival, so why not my little girl? Nobody could stop her. It would have been a sin to stop her. The young and the old were dancing. Old men and women with walking sticks limped to the streets and lock to boogie, the Togolese style.
For me, the exciting aspect of it all is that West African football has come of age. If Nigeria had qualified it would have been a West African affair. Even without Nigeria, it is. Ghana, Togo and Cote d’Ivoire are going to play in Germany in 2006. It is a new beginning for West Africa.
PRESTIGE
Egypt, Senegal, Zaire, Cameroon, Nigeria, and Morocco have participated in the World Cup but did not shine. Other nations must slug it out there, because it is time an African country won the prestigious World Cup.
If African countries have won in the Olympics and the Junior World Cup tournaments, there should be no reason why they cannot make a mark in the seniors. They only have to shed the inferiority complex bothering some of the teams. Africa must shine!
Now, some Nigerians are saying Ghana, Togo and Cote d’Ivoire will be the whip-ping boys at the World Cup. I’ll advise those Nigerians to cry their own cry.
This article was first published on Saturday, October 15, 2005
Features
Legacy is important in life
The Bible which is usually referred to as the good book, says that good name is better than riches according to Proverbs 22:1. Our generation has turned this sound, Godly advice upside down and has put the love for riches first before good name.
Instead of making the right choices, we are all in a mad rush for money, fame and selfish ambitions. Morality is far from our minds and comes nowhere near the top of our list of priorities.
The first thing most people think of, when given a position as a leader, especially in government, is to look for opportunities to make money. It is a worrying trend in our society that should not be encouraged at all. Gradually our society is placing value on riches than integrity.
Time tested values that have characterised activities of churches are even being compromised to the extent that, leadership roles in churches, are being given to people, based on wealth. No wonder, scandals are manifesting in various churches.
Every person has the freedom of choice. You can decide to choose good or choose evil; it is in your power so to choose. However, what we should all realise is that, choices have consequences.
Decision making is all about choices. If you make the right choice as a leader, your name could be forever etched in gold and your descendants, shall forever benefit from your good choices.
Lee Kuan Yew, said that he had the option of being selfish and making himself and his family rich or to seek the welfare of the nation but he chose the latter because that was the right thing to do.
Today, his name has been etched in gold in Singapore forever. His descendants are revered simply because of what their father and grandfather and great grandfather, did for the nation of Singapore. He left a legacy, a legacy of selflessness, a legacy of patriotism, a legacy of honesty and integrity and finally a legacy of leadership.
I listened to a story about Peduase Lodge. Apparently, it was a gift to Dr Kwame Nkrumah out of love and appreciation by an Akuapim woman, for him to build his private residence. Dr Nkrumah not being selfish but full of patriotism, decided to use it as official residence like Camp David in the US.
He is widely acknowledged also as incorruptible and this has endeared him to the hearts of many Ghanaians although there were some governance issues like the PDA, which somehow dented his otherwise excellent legacy.
Whenever his name is mentioned, his legacy is remembered and wonderful things are said about him. Such legacies, buy favour for his descendants, which in the case of Dr Nkrumah, led to people voting for his daughter to be elected as Member of Parliament for the 5th Parliament under the 4th Republic.
Recently, the passing of a prominent chief in the Asante Region, was announced. This chief has been acknowledged as one of the chiefs in the country, who have banned Galamsey in their area of jurisdiction.
Given the national outcry against illegal mining as a result of the devastating consequences to our environment and related health problems, this fantastic legacy, will go a long way to create favour for his children wherever they find themselves in this country.
Compared this to the son of a notorious armed robber seeking favour for say admission to an SHS. I guarantee you, the moment you mention your name and confirm that you are the son of Ataa…, the legacy of your father will immediately start working against you.
NB: ‘CHANGE KOTOKA INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT TO KOFI BAAKO INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT’
By Laud Kissi-Mensah
