STX AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING

STX AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING

Wears a shroud
Forever veiled
Clouded and unclear
Clad in darkness,
In a sea of mist and haze
Mysterious confusion.


Deals done in the dark
A people left with questions
People asking how come?
Where from?
Korea?
Who is STX?


They claim to be builders,
Sure they’re builders
They just probably might be builders
But the question still remains
Why STX?
Who is STX?
Where from STX?
Anybody ever heard of them before?
Saw them on my television last weekend,
A documentary on STX.
Looked like a fast food joint commercial to me.


From South Korea you say, this STX
Really?
All the way from Asia?
Are they any good?
They must be,
We got them here all the way from
South Korea, that’s quite a distance
To travel for affordable housing.


How affordable is affordable housing?
Is it this pretty reliable housing?
How much per unit of this affordable housing?
You call it affordable,
Pretty relative, that word affordable
How affordable is affordable?
Who knows the meaning of affordable?


You’ve spoken enough confusing English
Kindly speak to Ghana in plain and simple English,
The man on the street fails understand you
Neither does the unemployed university
Graduate sitting beside him
What happened to communication?
Your brand of English is topsy-turvy.
How many units do you plan on building?
200,000 you say,
Pretty impressive, 200,000 eh?
At least you are thinking affordable,
That should count for something right?


What is this I hear about GREDA complaining?
Apparently, they feel they have been handed the
Short end of the stick.
I guess Ghanaian builders are that terrible,
GREDA and co, your nation feels you’re terrible.
All those housing units you built,
Your nation does not consider them good enough buildings,
Maybe they look like shacks or tents,
I can’t quite tell, kindly ask your nation Ghana.
What a shame, we had to go all the way to South Korea
To bring in their builders.
Ghana needed affordable houses,
Can you guess what Ghana did?
We went all the way to South Korea
Looking for affordable housing.


What makes these Koreans so impressive?
A better work ethic?
Do they manufacture burnt bricks with bare hands?
Maybe they work for 24 hours nonstop
Who knows?
Only those who brought them in can tell us.
What happened to creating jobs?
What happened to empowering the Ghanaian
To take the reigns of his nation’s destiny?


Are Ghanaian contractors only good for pothole patching,
Replacement of rotten floor boards and pulling of road side weeds?
Isn’t it way past time we developed our nation’s human resource
Other than running after those of others?
Ever wondered how come their skilled labour
Seem much better than ours?
Are they really better than ours?
What makes our builders bad?
What makes STX better?
Can we not make ours good enough?
Have we thought of making ours better?
You overlooked the local contractors,
That’s an endorsement of how terrible you feel they are.


So many questions hang in the air,
STX and affordable housing,
What makes those two synonymous?
What is the nitty-gritty of that deal?
We do not need documentaries
With spectacular camera angles
Touting the prowess of STX
We do not need STX on our television sets
All we need is the nitty-gritty of the STX
Affordable housing deal.
We keep wallowing in our mistakes
We keep parading our mistakes,
Does Ghana enjoy making mistakes?
Is the Ghanaian nation a mistake?
Please give us the nitty-gritty of the
STX Ghana affordable housing deal.


You sacrifice local labour in the name of a better Ghana,
Soon, there will be nobody in Ghana for you
To talk to about a better Ghana.
Is this the better Ghana?
Please tell us more on STX and Ghana,
We woke one more and heard of STX
The very presence of STX is an
Indictment on the character of our nation
Please do tell us more on STX and Ghana.