Ghana Postal Service Or Ghana Pifering Service?

Stephen A.Quaye

Not too long ago I raised concern about the rate at which corruption was outgrowing roots and extending to almost every part of the country.

The article titled, “CORRUPTION HERE, CORRUPTION THERE, CORRUPTION EVERY WHERE”, did not go down well with some people who poured insults on me.

But today, what are we seeing or experiencing? Even the Kufuor chopped stumps of corruption have turned out to be Agya Atta’s biggest corruption trees in Ghana.
The police man or inspector “Koti” who is expected to arrest the criminals and level charges against them put them before the law courts for the law to deal them, is collecting bribe at the charge office and throwing away dockets or charge sheets.

The judge who is supposed to use his gavel or legal mallet to crush crime from the system by putting criminals at correctional institutions have been intentionally delaying cases for it to lose its interest.
Teachers who are suppose to spend their time imparting knowledge and skills on to our children have been reporting late and instead insist the children should pay extra money for classes outside their normal classroom hour studes.

Politicians have been doling out money to journalists to kill stories that might expose them whiles some journalists are also justifying their collection of bribes by negotiating investigative stories with their contacts as against their sources.

The list of professionals involving themselves in various forms of crimes goes on and on with that of workers at Ghana Postal Service involving themselves in criminal dealings becoming the current issue for discussion.
Even long before their dealings were exposed I never had trust in officers of GPS either in Ghana or from here in Toronto-Canada.

It could be recalled that several years back whiles a child in primary school; it became a serious competition among young pupils as to how many of pen pals you correspond with or bible study pamphlets you receive per a term.

In those days, a teacher picks the letters from the postal box almost everyday because not a single day passes by without a pupil receiving a letter from his mates from other schools or his foreign pen pals or a bible school teacher.

Teachers encouraged such correspondence because it improved letter writing as well as literature in our schools.

Then the internet came where one can send thousand words in a letter form within few minutes and get a reply within few seconds reducing letter writing by 87 percent in our schools throughout the country.

As the letter writing and postage went down, the workers also decided to hatch plans to steal because now not many people spend time tracing their parcels.

A case in point was when I bought three pairs of ladies sandals, five different books on marriage and relationship, a ladies shirt and posted it to my wife in Ghana. The whole parcel went missing with no clue to trace it where about till now.

Afterwards I bought another set and registered it before it got to my wife and even that somebody attempted to steal from the parcel by opening one side of the box.
Not that alone, she was made to pay extra 70 Ghana cedis at the counter before collecting her parcel which I have paid everything here in Canada before mailing it to her to go and collect without paying any fee.

In Canada, even if a feather is posted to you, it comes into your mail box without anybody attempting to steal a string from it.

Every apartment unit has a mail box which has the number the same as the unit number so if it is 105.1 Koyebeda Road, the mailing address will be 105.1 with the street name attached simple and easy.

In fact there is too much stealing going on at Ghana Postal Office which needs to be addressed. Laptops, phones, cameras, clothes, shoes, books, medicines, jewellery and common pictures people posts to their beloved ones in Ghana are being stolen everyday.

If it is Ghana Postal Service and not Ghana Pilfering Service, then it is time some changes are effected in that sector to put back peoples confidence in that service.
At least there must be a system where every mail coming from a foreign destination is given a barcode or serial number that can make it easy to trace people who handled it to the last person who touched it before the recipient.

To emulate Canada Post, Ghana Postal Services should be able to introduce a system where one can track his parcel at any part of the world as I do over here anytime my wife mails a registered mail to me and it gets into the borders of Canada till is delivered.

It is a shame that letter writing competition is almost no more in our schools to promote postal services. At least Ghana Postal Services can take it upon itself by promoting correspondence workshops in our primary schools which will go a long way to improve literature in our schools.

Ghana Postal Services must purge itself from this serious stealing going on because it is a big disgrace to our country Ghana.

Stephen A.Quaye, Toronto-Canada, December 14, 2011