While socializing with the District Director of Agriculture (DDA) and some of his staff I mentioned, I can’t remember why, that I pay around 30% of my salary in income taxes. They had a great time with this bragging that in Ghana they don’t pay income taxes. Which I am not sure if it is accurate, I believe that the government employees do pay income taxes? But as a whole a very small portion of the population or businesses pay taxes, I heard. They may have been exaggerating to tease me.
My answer was “off course you don’t need to pay income taxes, you have the NGOs”
There was not much laughing after that.
The next day in a coaching session with the director we talked about a problem that is persistent in most districts. Most districts have fewer mottos than they have people on the road. The front line personnel, the Extension Agents, are the one travelling the most and meeting the farmers. In Chereponi there are 6 of them. Then there are DAOs and various “experts” that form the next strata of the administrative sandwich. Some of them are required to travel on occasion. In Chereponi the mottos are assigned according to seniority. The 4 available mottos are assigned to the 4 people who spend the most time in the office. None of the Extension Agents have a motto; not one from MOFA anyhow.
So I told the director that 3 years ago CIDA bought many mottos for MOFA (Ministry of Food and Agriculture). Some say that there was 1200 of them. To this day it’s hard to get a straight answer as to where the mottos are. Some say that there are still mottos waiting to be distributed, some just vanished. Some say that some districts close to the capital, everyone has mottos.
The point is that there is a certain amount of corruption and the main complain of the DDA and their staffs is MOFA’s inability to distribute the mottos equitably and/or to provide the number of mottos the staffs in the field need.
We accept and hope that some mottos make it to the people they were intended to. How does it feel to know Canadian money was used this way? Whatever it is we feel, there is not much that either the DDA or myself can do about it. But neither of us likes it.
“But how do you think it feels when I come in a district where there are so few mottos and they are not giving to the people who need them the most? Some of those mottos were bought by a Canadian agency .We know that if the Extension Agents had better access to transportation they would, maybe, help a few more family out of poverty? What’s more important; entitlement and seniority or helping as many people as possible out of poverty?”
“I understand that this is a cultural issue and it is very sensitive. It's not something that you can’t totally change; but this is something you have the power to influence. At the end of the day is about helping the less fortunate of your district? The people you drive by when you drive back home to Tamale on the weekend. The people who live around you, who live around the people with the mottos they don’t really need? This is something that you can influence, in your district.”
How does it feel? That’s what I am asking myself.
Cheers
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