Village Rainbows

Bicycles have long been used as a means of transportation in Africa. Here in Ghana, the use of  bicycles was first introduced into the northern parts of the country with working bicycles made in China but they have also become popular in the southern regions, with an assortment of used bikes imported from Europe and North America.

Biking has taken on a new dimension with the first Mountain Biking Festival held in the Western Region on the weekend of February 19 and 20. Seventeen teams from villages including and near Akwadae and Cape Three Points competed on Saturday over a 5 kilometer course set through the rubber tree plantation near the village of Aluaso. On Sunday a 2o kilometer social ride was organized through the countryside with locals and visitors enjoying the scenery and exercise. For future events, check the website: www.ghanawestcoastmountainbiking.com

It is a new year and time for a rant!!! Just before Christmas, I went to Takoradi to buy a few items that were needed to replace faulty components in my hotel.

Call me naive. Call me foolish. But I think that we should all contribute to “Helping Build a Better Ghana”. God knows that I have done my share of collecting and paying taxes for the Government of Ghana since I built the hotel and made the country my permanent home in 2001.

“What happened to bring this on?” you may ask. Well, the week before that trip I asked a friend who has a shop that sells various building supplies if she could supply our hotel a water heater to replace one which is faulty. She offered to have one brought on her next load of supplies from Accra. She called her supplier for the price and I gave her the money in advance. I stopped to pick up the water heater on the appointed date and requested a receipt from my friend, the shop keeper.

My friend and I have had discussions about the VAT before so she knows how I feel about it, but she proceeded to tell me that she could get me a receipt but not a VAT receipt and she would have to  get it directly from her supplier. She explained that the supplier would not provide her with a VAT receipt for that item or any of the other items which she had brought from Accra. She went further to tell me that none of the wholesalers in Accra collect or pay VAT. Bottom line – no VAT receipt for my purchase, and no credit to offset the VAT which my hotel collects from all of our guests and submits to the Government of Ghana.

Not good enough for me – I have been down this road too many times. This is an area that you don’t see many folks here talking about and I am going to offer my guess of the reason why. Folks fit into several categories:

1. they live off the land and do not use cash in their day to day living

OR

2. they don’t give any consideration or care about what happens to the country

OR

3. they know that their family and/or friends are dodging the VAT tax and they don’t want to be seen as traitors

OR

4. They are in business and are themselves actively avoiding the collection and payment of the VAT tax

This is not a complete list. The bottom line is this: the VAT tax is not working and a lot of businesses are falling through the cracks in the system.  The VAT Service and ultimately the citizens of Ghana lose out in this situation, and so will my friend – I will not be buying from her shop until she starts to conform to the laws of the land.

This happens over and over, every day, in this country. The original VAT is a tax which does not work in this country. It is too complicated for many businesses, whose book keeping is not able to deal with a Value Added Tax. Apparently the VAT Service recognize this problem and that is why they have implemented the VAT “Flat Tax” of 3%. Unfortunately they did not have to courage or the insight to scrap the “value added” idea altogether and change the regime to a straight flat sales tax for everyone, with a lower rate. This would be something that would be much easier for retailers to understand, for consumers to accept, and for the Service to administer. It would also be much fairer to all businesses – at the present time, the hospitality industry is required to collect and submit 15% tax with very few VAT inputs to offset the output, while retailers are allowed to collect and submit only 3% tax. Where is the fairness in that?

2011 is a new year and I for one think that it is time for the Government of Ghana to revisit the VAT system and make it fair for all by changing it to a flat tax and by ensuring that it is enforced uniformly.

This past Saturday, I sat in the backed up traffic somewhere between Mallam Junction and Keneshie Market in Accra, edging my way one car length at a time along with everyone else who was intent on leaving the capital. Somewhere behind us, I could hear the wail of a siren and along with my fellow travellers, we all tried our best to move to the side to make way for the emergency vehicle that we thought was desperately trying to make its way through. There was very little room to maneuverer in the cramped conditions and even after our best efforts there were only a few feet between my car and the taxi beside me.

Suddenly a police motorcycle was beside us, weaving his way between the crush, followed abruptly by a second one. The rider of the second one reached out and with obvious intent smashed the mirror off the taxi, waving his fist and directing some deleterious comment  towards the hapless taxi driver who sat defenceless as he watched his mirror soaring through the air before crashing to the pavement and smashing into pieces.

My passengers and I had not even had time to vent our outrage at the unnecessary actions of this policeman when a cavalcade of  six shiny black Toyota LandCruisers sped by, each emblazoned with the logo of CARE International, the passengers comfortably hidden behind air conditioned smoked glass and oblivious of the threat to everyone’s safety that they were causing and quite obviously un-CAREing about the plight of the taxi driver whose car had just been damaged.

After they had passed, the driver retrieved the remains of his mirror, and we all continued to shuffle our way towards the edge of the city. The officials of CARE International presumable were off somewhere to “defend dignity” and to “fight poverty” while the rest of us were left to live our real lives to the best of our ability, without the benefit of a police escort to take us through the chocked traffic that is so much a part of the daily grind of Ghanaians who reside in Accra.

The actions by this organization are not surprising to most citizens in this country and the 69 others in which it operates, but it should give cause for concern to those people overseas who make donations to CARE. In 2009, the total contributions totaled in excess of US$700,000,000. Somewhere in the zeros, this organization has lost respect for the people that they say they are out to assist. Apparently with all those zeros, their time is much more valuable than that of the rest of us.

Red Bull and other energy drinks

I was recently sitting with a friend at one of Accra’s landmark spots enjoying a cold beer and catching up on recent events in our lives. One of the illuminated signs over the bar stuck in my mind and set me to thinking the following day. The sign was promoting the well-known Red Bull energy drink, enjoyed by many, I am told, who wish to “enhance” the effects of the alcoholic beverage that they are consuming. My interest was not so much in the drink but rather of the aluminum can in which the drink is contained.

The popularity of the drink, and the very can itself, are a mockery of this country – a country, rich in bauxite but one that relies on outside sources for its aluminum requirements. Even now, Ghanaian bauxite that could be so easily turned into cans to contain the “energy drink” consumed by countless Ghanaians is shipped from Takoradi to be refined somewhere else in the world, in one of those bitter ironies of this modern capitalist age. At one time, Ghana provided cheap electricity to refine someone else’s bauxite, and now when the country could benefit significantly from refining its own resources, the economic “masters” of the world have found a cheaper source of electricity than ours to do that job. Once again, the economic interests of Ghana and Ghanaians have been sacrificed for the economic benefit of foreign corporations.

How many know the story? A tale of the economic colonizer convincing a newly “independent” country to construct a dam, a dam that flooded a vast area of agricultural land and destroyed forests which contained valuable timber resources and once provided the ingredients for traditional medicines to keep the nearby inhabitants healthy. The story of promises that the rich bauxite resources of the country would be refined here, and thus create an industrial base for the further economic development of the country.

Instead, what happened? Well, the dam was constructed, with loans from willing “donor” nations thus putting the county into debt and subjecting it’s government to outside financial controls. Contracts were signed to guarantee that cheap electricity would be used to refine bauxite but instead of extracting the ore from Ghana, it was brought in from the mines of some other hungry country, leaving Ghanaian bauxite in the ground for many more years.

The initial contracts guaranteed cheap electricity rates for just long enough for the economic colonizer to maximize its profits, and then, with turbines worn out and silted up and in need of expensive refurbishment, they abandoned the ship and moved on to other greener pastures.

Meanwhile other economic colonizers have stepped up to the plate, more than willing to continue the plunder of the country. The bauxite resources were still an attraction, and so they were brought out of the ground and sent outside to be refined. The country continued to aid in its own exploitation. The rail system which was built by the political colonizer was for a time used to transport the ore to the harbour but it soon fell into disrepair. So the ore is now transported by a large fleet of multi-axle truck trailers using the road system, further contributing to environmental global warming and also adding substantial wear and tear on an already overstressed highway system – a system which in turn the “independent” government borrows money to rebuild, once again, placing itself in debt and under the control of outside financial sources.

And the cycle repeats itself…. How addictive an “energy” drink becomes. The energy of a people and their resources – addicted to continued and continual control by outside economic colonizers.