The Minister of Information and Presidential spokesperson, Mustapha Hamid has clarified the relationship between his outfit and the Communications unit at the presidency headed by Eugene Arhin.
According to him, the Flagstaff House Communications unit is under the Ministry of Information and as such, both the Director of Communications at the Presidency, Eugene Arhin and his deputy, Fatimatu Abubakar are part of the structures of the ministry.
Speaking to journalists in Ho on Monday, after a two-day “Executive Retreat” of the Ministry and its key agencies, Mr. Hamid noted that, “the communications unit in the presidency per our arrangement as an NPP government falls under the ministry of information. So the director of communication at the office of the president and his deputy are on the organogram under the ministry of information.”
This clarification by the minister may clear the seemingly confusion among sections of the Ghanaian populace about Mr. Hamid’s dual role as an Information minister and Presidential spokesperson, and that of Eugene Arhin, the director of communication at the presidency.
Meanwhile, the Minister has outlined some programmes adopted at the end of their retreat to bring government in sync with the citizenry at all levels.
These include a yearly town hall meeting in each of the 216 districts where citizens would have the chance to interact with key government actors on various policies and programmes, in addition to the rejuvenated ‘Meet the Press’ series and the introduction of a ‘National Policy Summit’.
The minister also hinted of plans to translate into six major Ghanaian languages, key government policy documents such as the President’s state of the nation address and highlights of the budget, in order to bring government closer to the citizenry.
“We want to deliver a governance system that allows the Ghanaian people to feel that their government is with them and they are in touch with government which not divorce from the citizens. So we have fashion out programmes and projects for Ghanaians to have the opportunity to hold government to account on a day-to-day basis rather than for us to wait in an election year to do an accounting to the people tour,’ Hamid explained.
The two-day ‘executive retreat’ was attended by all three deputy information ministers, deputy communications director at the presidency, chief director of the Ministry of Information as well as directors of key agencies under the ministry.
