The Register of Companies recently announced the process of deleting at least 513,338 names of various businesses that have defaulted in renewing their certificates from its register. Clearly, what this means is that the names of these businesses would be available for others to use.
But living in a country where very little emphasis is placed on research and data collection, it makes it impenetrable to understand why all these companies or sole proprietorships are not going back to renew their registrations. The question is – are they still in operation or out of business?
This rhetorical question opens the Pandora’s Box for public discourse on why businesses are failing in the country.
While lack of capital or funding, technology, inadequate management skills among others can be cited for some of these failures,  the poor attitude of employees – stealing, carelessness, rudeness, tardiness, laziness among a host of others play a major role.
Just recently, a video went viral on the social media, where a businessman was seen lamenting bitterly about the bad conduct of some employees who are only interested in stealing from their employers despite the availability of Close-circuit Television (CCTV) cameras in most of the work places.
Though research indicates that an average company spends 5% to 20% of its annual budget on security, the court recently jailed two workers of a financial institution in Accra for stealing a whopping GH₵1.2 million from their employers.
Several of these cases are still pending before the law courts, one of which involves two ladies–a sales officer and a cashier – who allegedly within a week stole GH¢466,945.19 from their employers.
Interestingly, one of them was alleged to have transferred the money to her boyfriend, to facilitate his journey abroad.
The Chronicle is concerned because we are in an era where unemployment figures are ballooning and turning into a ticking time bomb, as well as a security threat to the very existence of our nationhood. Yet those who have the opportunity of being employed are misbehaving.
The Chronicle therefore appeals particularly to the youth to show dedication towards their work and not allow greed to set in. They must also see the work they have been employed to do as their own and work towards its success.
This is the only way, we dare say, businesses will begin to flourish and help to reduce the high unemployment rate in the country.
