#FIX YOUR ATTITUDE- LET GHANA PROSPER.

Pay your taxes, Avoid Tax evasion and smuggling, Keep your environment clean and avoid filth, refrain from galamsey and pollution of our water bodies, Obey traffic rules, get ethical and honest to your employer, halt petty thievery of electricity and water.

GROW GHANA COLLECTIVELY – FIX YOUR ATTITUDE.

I got the opportunity to meet a few rich Ghanaian men this weekend and I asked them a question each:

‘why are you not building factories for the youth of this country to get jobs to do?

They burst into laughter, then one said:

The people shouting no food and jobs are the Nation wreckers.

I run a manufacturing business and a trading business and the biggest challenge in my manufacturing business is not power, nor infrastructure. the biggest challenge is getting honest people who mean well and ready to join hands to make Ghana grow.

Everyone we hire appears to be on a mission to steal as much as possible, Inflated invoices and record less than the actual number of units produced.

The worst part of it all is that all the fraud we’ve uncovered is not done by a single person, it’s usually many staff who collude with each other, from production, to sales, to finance, even top management.

There was a year I overhauled management three times.

But I’ve found a solution. I now use Indian expatriate management. So competent, so honest and so straightforward.

I thought they were expensive at first with all the visa fees, accommodation, house staff, but now that losses due to staff theft have been reduced to a minimum, and efficiency increased, the Indian management has turned out to be cheaper than the previous African management.

Now, all sensitive positions involving money go to Indians. Ghanaians are only allowed in non-sensitive positions.

I used to criticize indigenous African companies like the Dangote Group that hires so many Indians when there are many unemployed Africans, but now, I understand their painful decisions.

My biggest challenge in the trading business is the same, getting honest staff. The form of trading occurs in the open market, and involves staff having access to huge sums of money running into a few millions.

I know how much I pay to security companies to provide escorts for the staff, not to prevent robbery, but to ensure that the staff go straight to the bank to deposit the money after the day’s sales and not disappear with my money.

This money spent on security companies is even enough to be declared as profit. We have to spend on CCTV, biometric scanners and other things that wouldn’t be needed if staff weren’t looking for the slightest opportunity to steal.

It got so bad at a point that my main criteria for employing staff was no longer competency or certificates, but honesty.

At least, competency and skills can be learnt, but once you’re dishonest, you’re dishonest.

We always complain of the economy and how there are no jobs. I know people abroad who would have loved to set up job creating businesses in Ghana but they can’t because they can’t get trustworthy persons to run it.

I know people in Ghana with so much money, they want to start factories and other job-creating businesses but they can’t because they are occupied elsewhere and can’t get any trustworthy persons to run their business. So instead of investing in the real sector and creating jobs, they’ll just buy treasury bills, while the thieves are shouting no jobs and food.

I bet, large African organizations like Dangote can set up shops in every African country and create millions of jobs, but I bet inbuilt corruption and dishonesty that has gradually become acceptable is preventing them from helping Africa.

Many big businesses would have been born in Ghana if we engaged if we fixed ourselves.

Start a poultry farm and they will steal your eggs. Some will actually kill the chicken so as to be told to take them home.

Start an entertainment/viewing/game center and they’ll be pocketing your money. On the days you’re around at the business, the money realized will be ten times of the money realized when you’re not around. Because they’re eating your money and eating their future.

Buy and lease out a vehicle to a driver to use and watch him finish you.

Start a restaurant, the same thing will happen. More than half of the total ingredients will end up in their personal kitchens.

Even attendants in ordinary provision shops, or kiosks will find a way to steal from small investors.

You’ll see them quote their evil, wicked saying “That a person eats where they work,”mm.”

Just imagine, justifying theft at work, killing their own jobs, stealing water/electricity, tax evasion and the list continues.

In the end, the same people point their crooked fingers at politicians when they are not any different.