"POWER TO THE PEOPLE"
Let me begin with a confession. I almost dropped this title for a less "controversial" one. I use the word "controversial" because as a citizen of a country(i.e. Ghana) where almost everything (including football) is politicised,
I was aware (and concerned) of the possibility of this piece, being subjected to the same "political scrutiny". In the end I chose to keep it, simply because I couldn't find an alternative that captured the soul of this piece quite like "Power to the people".
The concept, 'Power to the people" was made popular by ex-President J.J Rawlings in the early 80"s when
the then PNDC Govt came into power. The idea behind "Power to the people" was to develop and implement a decentralisation programme, designed to mobilise citizens to actively participate in the decision-making process.
Some 20 years on, a rapidly growing phenomenon across our airwaves can best be described as
a contemporary expression of this 'Power to the people' concept!
Over the last couple of months, I have observed -across various media channels-that there appears to be a growing number of complaints/concerns being levelled at consumer-marketing companies on a number of issues, ("bad adverts", product/service quality, etc) on a regular basis; and I have subsequently noticed that a few days or weeks after these complaints are aired, most of the affected companies take action.
It is this growing phenomenon-when consumers speak out on issues, and companies respond promptly-sometimes at a huge cost (millions of cedis) to these companies, which I refer to as "Power to the people".
There are several "complaint channels" open to the consumer today; you can "pick your choice", as they say.
For example, th ...