The Aftershocks of Pandemic Restrictions: Report from Ghana: Part 5: The Public Servant
Antem, Cape Coast
Thursday 18 January 2024
George Justice Arthur is a father of six, a lawyer, a senior tutor at Ghana National College, and Constituency Secretary for the Democratic National Party for Cape Coast South. We met at his home at Antem and he began by telling me how the pandemic affected his constituents.
So when it came, we were all shocked. We were in the state of despair. Most of us were in the house and we were afraid to be affected by the pandemic because we were told it was a dangerous disease and therefore when it affects you, you are not going to survive. You are going to die.
So there was a shutdown and all that in the country and the schools also closed down and there was a directive from the government to close down every school. So we were in the house, we were not going out and all that.
He goes on to explain that government workers continued to draw their salaries while staying at home, but those in the private sector had no such luck. Churches and private organizations helped out some, but, Mr. Arthur tells me, “It was not enough at all.”
Some children were able to continue their education, after a fashion, by means of correspondence courses, telecourses, and the internet. But children whose parents could not afford private school tuition or private tutors were out of luck. When school finally resumed, children had made no academic progress at all during the time they were away.
Lost income, boredom, and home confinement were the toxic ingredients in a recipe for increased domestic violence, incest, rape, teen pregnancy, and child marriage:
When someone is hungry, it breeds anger.
The parents couldn’t withstand [the children’s] stubbornness and they were beating them mercilessly.
Some fathers might not even have their wives around. Their wives might travel to other places. They have separated and the kids are with their father. Sometimes they actually develop a lust for their own children. And they rape them.
I ask Mr. Arthur if he knew anybody who died of the covid. He can think of three people, all past the age of sixty.
Was it worth it? He assures me it was:
It’s worth it that schools were closed down and other stringent measures were taken. Otherwise a lot of people would have died. A lot more people would have been affected by it.
We’ve learned a lot of things in terms of technology and things like that. [Before covid] we used to have face-to-face lectures and all that. But now we’ve learned a lot about Zoom meeting and all that. Now you can sit comfortably in your home and work. [Before covid] there was nothing like that.
We thought you have to go to lectures, go and sit in the lecture room. I was reading law at the University of Ghana Legon, and I had to be there. But during the covid era, we were having Zoom lectures and all that. And things were successfully done. We were getting grades, exams online, entering assessment, and all that. So covid has introduced us to another world.
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