Residents of Koforidua, the Eastern Regional capital, are complaining about the deplorable state of the Jubilee Park in the city, a state facility which some of them used to hire for holding events like funerals.
The Koforidua Jubilee Park,like any other Jubilee Park elsewhere in the country, was built in 2007 as a monument to mark Ghana’s 50th Independence Anniversary.
Hitherto, there was the Koforidua Jackson’s Park but the Jubilee Park came in as an improved state facility to hold national events and, as it later became the case, private ones at a charge.
However, as the Ghanaian Times itself has seen it, the residents have every right to worry about the state of the facility.
It is truly worrying that such high profile facility which is just 14 years old should deteriorate that much, taking into account the fact that elsewhere such facilities are decades old but are still being used as if they were built just yesterday.
Meanwhile, the New Juaben Municipal Assembly and the Eastern Regional Police Command are associated with its use and hence the maintenance, so to speak
This paper’s most regret in this matter is that besides the money that has indirectly been allowed to go to waste, the state would have to cough some more money to fix the facility after which it would be left to be in ruins again.
One would not be wrong to say that it is not totally true that the Ghanaian does not have a good maintenance culture but rather state officials have adopted a culture of allowing public facilities to go through that cycle so they can always have the opportunity to award contracts and take their cutbacks.
Why is it that private properties do not usually suffer such magnitude of deterioration over short periods?
Even if the situation is blamed on bureaucracy in the public sector, this paper would stand its grounds that though that process is meant to ensure checks and balances, those in charge of it deliberately make things difficult in order to exploit it to their advantage.
If this is not the case, why should any group of people who truly love the country and are in charge of state facilities not save them from deteriorating, knowing very well the care for those facilities is part of their duties?
How come the Koforidua Jubilee Park has so deteriorated and been neglected for it to become an abode for lunatics, stray animals, miscreants like Indian hemp (wee) smokers and a place for some to attend to the call of nature.
Meanwhile, we are in a country where people hardly get spacious places to hold events such that roads are blocked to hold events.
The whip must be cracked for the narrative change and that change must start with the current crop of public officials.
