40 years and counting working for the government selflessly my mother tells me out of the blue that it is not worth dying for this nation. I was shocked initially to hear this coming from a woman who has raised and still is raising both her biological and non biological children to love and respect their country. In all my years never had I heard her say such a thing about the country. I immediately disagreed with her mentally not saying a word to her in reply but silently disagreed with her. She continued by saying, someone pockets millions of dollars/cedis meant for a project which never takes off and subsequently does not to account for it and the project never starts or is completed. The person continues life as nothing happens and is given another appointment when there is a change in government whereas the ordinary person seeking for the right thing remains exactly where they are if not worse off.
I have worked for the public sector for less than 10 years most of which were “semi sheltered” in a sense that I really could not tell what was going on outside my consulting room but in recent times I have been exposed to a few realities.
The first episode of such shocking revelations was when I was a new medical officer in a public hospital coming on a shift to find out that the doctor who had come in the shift prior to me had a draw in the office where each patient had to place a specific amount of money before being taken care of. This was shocking to me and when I mentioned it to another colleague; they just brushed it off saying “everyone knew about that…it was old news”. I was shocked and asked if management knew about this and I was told yes but nothing was being done about it. Obviously, this continued until he was moved elsewhere to continue.
In other instances, an individual misappropriates funds of a department and is not sacked but moved to another department and as expected the same thing would happen again, old habits die hard right? But a loss is occurring here.
What about the medical personnel who comes to work at 10am and is out of the hospital at 1pm to go to his or her private hospital, but is being paid by the government for an 8-5pm job. No one reprimands him or her and at times patients who want to seek their medical attention would have to go to their private clinics. The hospital administration tolerates this perhaps because they do not have enough medical personnel and so would have to tolerate such acts. Is this right? Well, one may argue that…no I can not get a reason to counter this.
A pharmacist working in a government facility directs patients to their private pharmacy to purchase medications instead of buying them at the government hospital. Or drugs which are sold at the government hospital are the personal property of the pharmacist. A pharmacist in a government hospital would only purchase medications from a company after a percentage has been paid to them.
Nurses would not come to work early to take up from their colleagues, however if they were working in other countries or in the private sector, they would arrive on time or prior to their scheduled time of work.
These are just a few or a tip of the iceberg of inappropriate incidents which occur in the public sector making life difficult for the few who want to make things worthwhile at their workplaces.
For me my take is this:
The country is worth dying for, but only if the right thing is done and people are made to account for the work they are employed to do. There should be supervisory roles in place with checks and balances ensuring that everyone employed would follow the rules and regulations and would be held responsible for everything under their watch.
No comments:
Post a Comment