Opinions of Thursday, 21 November 2013

Columnist: Ralph Wreckit

Do you know this machine?

Yes do you know this machine? If yes comment with your experience on my article.

Let me start telling you about it: it belongs as it says on the front, to ECG, but the feeding belongs to you; like someone parks a sheep in your house, it belongs to him; meaning he can come at any time but your duty is to feed her!! What the hell!!!

And this sheep is very hungry, it requires more food than I can afford, I feed, I feed. I feed and small time the sheep cries in need of more; and it is not simple cry, is a cry from a demonic possession, not a sound, not whistle, something capable of drilling your brain going on and on. It reminds me of my first born, the whole day quiet and the night disaster; no sleep.

Well this gadget to me is very interesting and it represent the image of the modern society, the remote control of your life; no one is around but they just tell you what to do like some kind of weird experiment in the laboratory: the machine makes a sound and you run to buy credit else you will be compelled to leave in a hot dark boring room.

This is what the street man will think about, but let us see how did we manage to get hooked to this machine from hell?

One day someone at ECG had a brilliant idea, why don’t we let the consumer finance our operation? And here we are, the machine came; every user pays for a service to be (sometime maybe) delivered. Think about the load shedding, we all bought credit but the provider was delivering at his convenience or capability, the power to our places. Smart, very smart! Let me give you an example more close to our stomach: if you wish to eat fufu with light soup, you get to send money to the farmer to plant and farm cassava, grow the goat before you will be able to cook them, but you can only eat when the farmer decides you can eat, ouch!!! Something is wrong here.

That’s not all, our farmer charges you money to grow cassava and the goat, but not only when to give it to you, but also what quantity. This week 2 cassava and 1 kilo of meat next time 1 cassava and half a kilo of meat why?? Well just because of his mood and what he has decided to do with the money and what he thinks you deserve to get in exchange. Hmmmm very strange.

Folks, let me know if I have got it all wrong, but I wouldn’t like to end it like this, in honor of my name, let me end this loud thought with the hope to hear from you. Let me ask the owner of this machine and the other similar one belonging to the same family: “dear ECG, have you heard about Ghana Standard Authority before, and if it is yes, have your machines been tested for an equal distribution of power?