Edwinology’s Lab: Only the filthy rich are allowed to be filthy

Once again, E-Lab looks at all our socio-economic indices and statistics that point out we are poor and concludes these statisticians have become so rich at facing the facts they have become poor at telling the truth.

Take the sanitation crisis for example. It is a poor man’s problem. But throwing money at it is a rich man’s luxury. And when you hear the Sanitation ministry announce new money at old waste, it is a cue to just shake your head.

 More money for sanitation only means more indiscipline. Ask rich men who throw parties.

When they do have to budget for a party, there is always an unbudgeted item – an invisible item, they never call by its real name. It is indiscipline.

One drunk guest who has lost his expensive power of bodily coordination is allowed to throw up into the pool and so the entire water is gurgling down the drain. The washrooms ooze with a terrible stench because everyone is allowed to booze.

Some of the guest too drunk to drive their Ferrari give in to their tearfully pleading wife to pick a Picanto taxi home. And the garbage man will find car keys in the wastebins the following morning. It was for the drunk in the Picanto.

The host smiles as the awkward kids break glass plates and crash wine glasses.

But because we are not allowed to call such rich people undisciplined, we call their parties a grand success and a massive talk of the town.

But at the Class Three teacher’s party, there are not enough plates so they had enough women to wash the plates for re-use so there are less things unwashed and dirty. The only time E-Lab saw anyone throw up, it was the host throwing a tantrum over a broken glass.

And so in the matter of waste and pollution, it is only rich countries who are allowed to throw big money at the problem. All other countries only throw people in jail.

Take industrialised nations for example, they have been allowed to pollute the environment with their huge smoking towers of Babel.

They have been allowed so much carbon emissions into the atmosphere such that the world has become so hot, leaving everyone with a cold because the rains have become so heavy.

And whiles Ghana may not be rich in the eyes of the G-20, we certainly are rich in our own eyes. Only the rich are prone to scandals. Everybody else is prone to gossip and some of the biggest scandals in Ghana has been in sanitation. Ask Zoomlion. Ask GYEEDA.

If the government were to deal with indiscipline, we won’t have to spend much on waste.  And this is the one line that has been missing in all of the First Lady’s speeches during the commissioning of new health facilities. Everyone leaves the commissioning as a fan of Mrs. Rebecca Akufo-Addo who is the only person who leaves with a fright. Fearful that indiscipline in the form of poor maintenance culture will destroy her legacy.

And if the President does not act like how her wife sees the problem, indiscipline will wipe out his own legacy. A flood of indiscipline will choke the factories, crash free SHS and lawlessness will dry the freshly dug dams.

No school pumps money to deal with indiscipline. A good teacher will just hand over a cheap cutlass for latecomers to learn how to become good farmers. A bad teacher buys an even cheaper cane to deal with them.

But alas, our government is not full of simple teachers. It is full of men. Guinness-drinking table of men E-Lab saw at the rich man’s party.

The men too afraid to touch the people because they are God’s anointed on December 7. And so instead of touching people and lose votes, the government prefers to touch the waste and lose money.

And why not? Only the filthy rich are allowed to get filthy.