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Within the kokompes, the casual industrial areas of Ghana, such because the huge Suame Journal in Kumasi, the standard small auto-repair enterprise consists of a grasp craftsman assisted by 4 or 5 apprentices. The apprenticeship system has been a lot criticised as a type of exploitation. The apprentices will not be given a daily wage however solely ‘chop cash,’ simply sufficient money to purchase meals, and the hours of labor are lengthy, usually twelve hours a day, six days per week, however on the entire the apprentices appear to be moderately content material with their lot and the apprenticeship is seen as offering a a lot sought-after and applicable initiation into the profession forward. Some masters are extra enlightened than others, offering higher instruction and extra nice working situations. For these apprentices who encounter tyrants there may be all the time the choice of working away; an possibility that many take. In most workshops the environment is relaxed and the tempo of labor unhurried. A lot time is handed ready for work to return, and when it comes there may be the prospect to look at another person attend to it. When one’s personal flip comes it’s a welcome diversion.
Though the hours are lengthy, absence for private errands, illness or attendance at funerals is instantly granted. The sample of self-discipline is home relatively than industrial. For the brand new apprentice, solely the work of his fingers is new. The social environment is totally acquainted to him, and to this extent he experiences far much less trauma than his European counterpart who enters a wierd new manufacturing facility surroundings. If he has any grievance it’s often scarcity of money, and this drawback is tackled by quite a few means, some official, and with a great deal of tolerance prolonged generally to the illegitimate.
The casual sector types a bridge between the official and the illegitimate, the formal sector and the underworld. It’s this less-than-savoury side of the kokompes which makes them unpopular with the law enforcement companies and the tax gathers. There’s a tendency amongst these in authority to treat the kokompes as dens of thieves, and there may be little doubt that sure prison parts shelter of their midst. The makers of skeleton keys and jemmies discover a prepared marketplace for their merchandise in a society by which excessive unemployment and wide-scale poverty co-exist with conspicuous affluence, and the auto elements shops will not be all the time averse to recycling a few of the plunder.
Though the good majority of artisans and apprentices within the casual sector will not be thieves, they’re liable to bend the law to its West African limits. At instances when imported spare elements are scarce, they’re by no means to be discovered within the formal sector shops and repair stations however solely within the magazines and kokompes. The diversion is effected by grasp fitters placing to worthwhile use their hyperlinks with the formal sector motor companies. A brother within the shops division will be certain that all items acquired from abroad are bought in bulk to the household spare elements retailer or becoming store within the journal. The sale is nominally official and the right ‘government-controlled’ worth is paid however the alternative is created for revenue taking that in proportion phrases would fulfill the insider sellers on the New York Inventory Alternate.
The efficient monopoly on the availability of all imported spare elements was a significant component within the fast enlargement of the casual sector in Ghana within the late Nineteen Seventies and early Eighties. Automobile homeowners taking their fees for restore at formal sector workshops have been directed to the kokompe for the mandatory spare elements. Quickly the customized went straight to the kokompe the place the job was performed extra rapidly and with much less inconvenience. By this implies the formal sector workshops have been reduce out and the kokompes sucked all obtainable enterprise into their Domain. The shopper ended up paying extra for his restore however the many mouths of the grasp’s prolonged household have been properly fed and all his sons and nephews turned apprentices. Suame Journal in Kumasi turned an financial energy that attracted a formidable new department of Ghana Industrial financial institution with, it was claimed, the biggest strong-room within the nation.
