Legalise Corruption

When you are not on talking terms with your wife but wish to be the first to break the licence, sorry I mean break the silence without losing your ego, don’t worry. Just give her a shaving stick, strip yourself naked in front of her in the bedroom department and ask her to shave you. I can assure you that she would never finish shaving you before you, you, you….hahahaaaa! Leave the other unshaved half for another conflict resolution activity. You would live long!

Do you remember that my boss who I nearly created a problem for when I typed a letter for him and underneath the letter I put PUBIC AFFAIRS MANAGER when I actually meant PUBLIC AFFAIRS MANAGER and he signed? He is fine thank you and you? Hahahahahaa. Papa Noi, ‘my things’ have come again and as usual, we try as much as possible to take it easy as being too serious about life can be sickening. Life is short and therefore must be ‘flexibilised’…small! Relax, you are not the first to have problems and you would certainly not be the last to do so, you hear? Okay!

‘Obiara didi wor n3 dwuma mo (to wit everyone eats at his workplace). Really? You gave your employer the money to invest in that business so you should siphon it ryt? So you must run him or her down by ‘eating’ his / her investment abi? After that, you go to church on Sunday and dance all the ‘useless’ dances to praise God for giving you an employer who is so st*pid to give you your source of livelihood when some others never got that opportunity. God is watching; karma is waiting!

This man walked in with a prescription form in hand with a baby and a car key to flaunt in his right hand to this ‘draw store’. The sales girl served him. It was a total of GHC37. In a rather smart move, he tried to ask the salesgirl to increase or rather inflate the amount on the receipt bcos he would have to go and claim it from his employers. Wow! But no, the salesgirl is too godly. In a polite but conspicuously loud tone, she reprimanded the middle aged buyer: ‘Sir, this would not help you; there is no blessing in it. Your employer has not offended you by agreeing to pay for the cost of your child’s medications. Well, I can inflate this receipt to 100 times what the price actually is depending on what you want but your child may not get well. You know why? Bcos U used him to benefit yourself unfairly against your employer; God is watching. What has your employer done to deserve this’. The man could not take it o; he was so embarrassed that he couldn’t even move as he managed a few steps to his car.

Corruption has become like HIV AIDS; we all talk about it and everybody says he is not ‘positive’. We know corruption is there but everyone says he or she is not corrupt! So who at all is the ghost called Corruption? Let’s pretend we don’t know.

Why is it that almost everyone wants to milk the system? Where from this orientation han? If you choose to do the right thing, your generations would be poor for life! There is a certain policeman who died a pauper leaving his children to suffer bcos he did the right throughout his career as a policeman and never took any cola on the road! He would prefer to educate you when you went wrong and letting you off the hook to accepting any cola from you. Does that explain why it would be difficult to exorcise the ghost?

The canker has become so endemic that the moment you try to be different, then you are seen as someone who something is wrong with and needs ‘deliverance’.

If you change your accountant bcos, there was no counterfoils for the receipts he issued, please be careful who next you go in for; he might never even issue any receipt at all.

A friend had to close down his pharmacy shop bcos he sacked all the sales people. The reason? They inflated the prices and were selling medicines at their own prices higher than the recommended price and would keep the difference. Negative smartness abi?

Another friend also discovered that her salesgirl in a mini supermarket was pilfering his sales money small small and so decided to go in for a POS device. Indeed the POS was a great solution to pilfering but only in lower sales compared with when there was no POS and depleting stock. My friend later discovered that the salesgirl had secretly acquired and started using her own POS device and had soo much money on it for herself thus collapsing his employer! What crime has the employer committed by giving you a source of livelihood?

There are some drivers who would not complain about salaries but buy less fuel say GHC150 instead of GHC200 into the car and pocket the difference. As for some of those lucky ones who have been given fuel cards/ coupons, the least said the better. They would get to the fuel attendant and change the fuel into cash. Almost everyone wants to benefit unfairly from the ‘system’. No wonder a popular man of God intimated some time last year that if we should forensically audit and prosecute people for corruption, then almost everybody will go to jail! I couldn’t agree with him more.

My neighbour’s mobile money business has collapsed. Why? The salesgirl thought he is so st*pid to have invested in such a business and so would transfer money to her friends and tell him she has made a wrong transaction and would not understand him when he says he will deduct it from her pay!

I doff my hat for all entrepreneurs who have dealt with human beings to succeed in their businesses. Herh, thank God for the employer; it’s not easy!

Some other employees come in as spies for your competitors. Others would start developing your brand somewhere especially if you are into manufacturing and leave you when you need them most.

My wife’s barbering shop is where the barber entertains his friends with full air-condition on, at non-peak hours even when there is no customer coming in. Cost of electricity is none of his business!

I was listening to a friend who owned a photocopier he used for business. The sales boy would work the whole day and make very little or no sales. In all of this, rent was being paid, utilities were being paid and the boy was paid his salary. Unknown to my friend, the sales boy had his own ream of A-4 sheets he had been using for the photocopies to customers and made so much money for himself until ‘alarm blow’ one day for ‘in head’. Sometimes some of these employees use mobile phones that are more powerful than their employers! Madam Employer, abeg, shine your eyes when you notice some of these things o, yoo!

A guy working in a popular KVIP would record low sales and show proof of that by showing the left over tissue/papers for the ‘base’ to his employer. Of course if the tissues are there, then it means there is no ‘consumption’. Unknown to the owner of the KVIP, this guy was using his own toilet-roll to sell instead of the owner’s. The guy had already made so much money yet it was the owner who still used his own money to maintain the place. Water free, cleaning free, no sale, all at the expense of the owner who, in his good mind, ‘come and let us make a living together here’ and he is seen as st*pid by his employee!

Sometimes one may be tempted to think that when you pay them well, they won’t ‘happy themselves’ but I beg to differ; it’s not always the case. A cat that sings ‘miaw miaw’ in Ghana would not go to America and back ‘wowo’! It doesn’t matter o, if they will steal, they will steal!

Just when you are thinking as for me I am clean, note that corruption comes in various forms. Can we sincerely say that the last job we applied for, was it not our employer’s computer and internet bundle that we used? Didn’t you ever print CVs and applications using your employer’s A4 sheets and toner? Didn’t you steal your employer’s time to attend a job interview and still received full pay? God forgive us all and bless the employer! Hmmm!

Seasoned and experienced businessmen and women would tell you that: EVERY BAD WORKER GIVES YOU ONE GOOD EXPERIENCE!

I deliberately did not touch on corruption at some public institutions bcos that one is normal or! We probably would have to start thinking of legalizing it so that we all know that instead of travelling 3 whole months and not getting that document, just pay money and get it in two days. That should be more economically productive or?

Wouldn’t this country make so much money if govt-controlled POS devices are made available on our roads for over-speeding drivers? In case you don’t know what I am talking about then ‘drive slowly’ and don’t overtake ‘by hat’ and be killing innocent souls! Christmas is coming and make a personal effort to exorcise that spirit of reckless driving that enters people around this time of the year. That spirit is nothing but RECKLESSNESS!

So now, who is corrupt? My answer is: ‘Nobody’!

Columnist: Mawuli Zogbenu