EMPIRE OF PAIN…

A total of 571,894 candidates sat for this year’s Basic Education Certificate Examination (BECE) at 2,158 centres across the country. This figure is slightly higher than the 531,707 that sat for the examination in 2020 and 517,332 in 2019. This year’s examination was delayed due to the disruption caused to the school calendar by the COVID-19 pandemic. The BECE is very important in the sense that, scores at this examination will determine the senior high school a candidate will be placed in when the results are released.

The West African Examination Council (WAEC), the organisers of the examination, assured the general public of a leak-free exam this year. I had hoped WAEC was going to live up to its word. Fortunately, despite rumours of leakages lurking on social media, the exams ended successfully without any major hiccup.

WAEC has over the years come under heavy criticism in the conduct of its examination. Many analysts have pointed fingers at the examination body for its inability to arrest this growing menace. The advent of social media platforms and advanced technology means leaked papers can be circulated widely across the nation in a matter of seconds. It is therefore imperative for WAEC to do everything within its power to prevent the leakage of its examination papers at any point in time.

It was quite gladdening to learn from the new Minister of Education that WAEC will soon be introducing a Test Serialisation System to stamp out the perennial issues of examination malpractices. Under a serialization system, multiple versions of the same questions can be generated which would be randomly distributed to the school. Under such a system, it would be difficult to leak exact questions to all candidates across the country since one cannot be certain which variant of the question he or she will be faced with on D-day.

As commendable as this initiative is, I do not think that is enough in itself. It is time to break the unbridled monopoly WAEC has enjoyed over the years now. I cannot wrap my mind around how an examination body that has overseen some of the worst cases of examination leakage anywhere in the world will continue to enjoy such a monopoly.

We cannot outsource the future of our kids to such an incompetent body for so long if they are not showing any willingness to do the work. It is time we start a serious national conversation on accreditation of other national examination bodies for the organization of the BECE and WASSCE.

On a warm Saturday morning, sometime in September, I came across the younger sister of an old friend of mine, when I was making my way to the Saltpond government hospital to visit a friend on admission there. This young lady was on her way to antenatal care at the hospital. A few months prior, the sight of a pregnant fourteen-years old teenager publicly fighting with the man who had impregnated him had saddened me greatly. The issue of teenage pregnancy in the Central Region particularly must worry any indigene of the region.

KasapaFM, a local radio station in Accra, reports that, out of a total number of 1,451 girls sitting for the BECE in Ajumako Enyan Essiam district, 25 of them were pregnant. Quite a number of people were surprised at the statistic, I wasn’t.

Last year, 595 cases of teenage pregnancy were recorded in the Ajumako Enyan Essiam District. The situation in the district reflects a menace that plagues the whole of the Central region of Ghana. Though for the past seven years, the number of teenage pregnancies recorded in the region has been decreasing, the 10,301 cases recorded last year is still on the high side.

Various interventions rolled out mainly by non-governmental organisations over the years have helped stem the tide in the number of cases rising. However, a lot more needs to be done, especially by the political leadership in the district in addressing this problem since at the root of the issue is economic deprivation.

Though the phenomenon of teenage pregnancy is a national problem, a careful look at the data reveals that it is disproportionately rampant in poorer and marginalised communities.

A sensitisation programme for some selected adolescent girls, boys and parents on the implications of unprotected sex, sexual and gender-based violence, domestic violence and reproductive health issues held at Ajumako-Bisease by the Central Regional Department of Gender in collaboration with the Regional Coordinating Council and supported by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) in August 2020 revealed amongst other things that, the inability of parents and guidance to buy sanitary pads and properly feed young girls was one of the major factors pushing young girls into unprotected sex.

It is appalling when one looks at the state of the department of social welfare in the district, it makes you wonder what role the office can play in rendering support to some of these young girls. The state of most social recreational and educational centres in the district leaves much to be desired and, in some cases, even non-existent.

I have often wondered why the department of social welfare or the department of Gender cannot implore the police to prosecute the men who impregnate these young girls below the age of 16 years since that is a criminal offence. Or those men do not exist?

As the car came to a stop at the traffic intersection, I could not help but observe the spectacle of a young boy helping the old man to his feet so that they could repeat what they had been doing all morning. They were stationed at this side of the intersection to beg for alms from the occupants of the stationary cars when the traffic light turned red.

The young boy knocked on my window. He had done that on several occasions when I use that stretch, every time I ignored him. I decided to engage him today. I rolled down my glass and asked how I could help him. He could barely string words together. My acquaintance who was with me in the car asked me to pull over so he could observe the man. I was reluctant but she insisted the man looked very unwell and in urgent need of medical attention.

I pulled over rather reluctantly and sat in the car whilst my acquaintance observed this old, frail-looking man. After what seemed like an eternity, she came over to me in a pleading tone that we needed to take the man to the hospital immediately. I asked if he was enrolled on the national health insurance scheme. He answered in the affirmative and asked his grandson to check his bag for the card. Fortunately, it wasn’t a hassle finding the card.

So together with my acquaintance, we drove the 79-year-old man together with his grandson to the community two health centre where he was immediately put on admission after seeing a doctor after his vitals were taken at the out-patients department (OPD). His blood pressure was abnormally high, and the medical advice was for him to be detained for further observation.

By this time, we had called his daughter, who hawks in another part of the city, to come to the clinic. She insisted the father was fine and should be discharged. Further conversations with her revealed she was worried about the cost she was going to incur from further treatment. She was not hopeful that the NHIS was going to be any helpful. That saddened me greatly.

It is no longer a matter of choice but an obligation for the state to take an important look at elderly care and health. From the data of the 2021 population and housing census, 4.3% of Ghana’s population is now 65 years and above. That is some 1,325,777 people. With life expectancy moving from an average of 57 years in 1999 to 64 now, it is expected that more older people are going to form a significant portion of our population in future.

The question on my mind is how we intend to take care of this growing number of elderly people in our society when the changing nature of our economy means most families cannot afford to have a stay home care provider for the elderly.

According to the 2021 population and housing census, 17,472,530, which is 56.7% of Ghana’s population are living in urban areas now. This rapid urbanisation is already having a toll on the traditional family system and will continue to exert pressure on the traditional value system of Ghanaian societies.

When I was growing up in my hometown of Ajumako Bisease in the early 1990s, I spent the first two decades of my life living with my mother and grandmother. For the first few years of my basic schooling, I always came back from school to meet lunch at home prepared by my grandmother. In those early years, my siblings and I were practically raised by my grandmother, when my mother had to pursue further education.

In later years, my mother also had to sacrifice part of her professional career development in order to stay in proximity with my grandmother to take care of her in old age. It is sad to note such a prospect will not exist for my generation.

How many private or state care homes are available in our communities now? State-provided homecare services are virtually non-existent with only a few private providers occupying that vacuum, however, the cost of the services put them beyond the reach of most Ghanaians. What does the state social care regulator envisage as the framework for the future?

The state can no longer assume families will be able to take care of their elderly people because the realities of the rapid, urban life show that is a misplaced assumption.

How many dedicated geriatrics facilities do we have in Ghana? How many trained geriatric nurses and doctors do we have in Ghana? Of the 54 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, 23 do not have a single geriatrician.

It is quite disconcerting that the aged persons’ bill has still not received the necessary attention of parliament. The bill has been on the books since 2010.

Whilst the NHIS exempt persons above the age of 70 years from the payment of premiums, much of the ailments that afflict the aged are not covered under the scheme. Medicines for the treatment of degenerative diseases such as hypertension, high blood pressure, cancer etc. are expensive but exempt from coverage of the NHIS.

The Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) programme is a progressive social intervention programme in the country which target the vulnerable including some aged people without productive capacity.

Some 260,000 aged persons are reported to have been enrolled on the programme, receiving various sums of stipends every two months. However, just like the NHIS, the stipend is very inadequate and leave out a lot of elderly people.

From the data of the 2021 population and housing census, it is obvious we have a social care crisis on our hands, and this must be addressed urgently. We should be looking at serious reforms which should include the question of the viability of the pension’s schemes of those in employment now and the sort of communities they will live-in in their old age.