Ghana@59 brochure: ISD was denied contract

It has emerged that the Information Services Department [ISD] applied to be given the contract to print Ghana's 59th Independence Day anniversary brochure but was rejected without any explanation.

Director of the ISD Printing Press, Mr S.K Appiah, told Onua News Thursday they were asked by the sacked acting Director, Francis Kwarte g Arthur to submit an invoice for the production of the anniversary brochure which they complied but were not given the contract.

He said no reason was given, adding he cannot say it was because of the power cut to the printing department of the ISD.

“Yes it is true that we do not have power but l cannot say that was why we could not print the brochure because the director asked us for our invoice which we submitted to him. But they did not offer us the job," Mr Appiah said.

He explained that the printing of materials for State functions, including Independence Day anniversary brochures, have been the sole responsibility of the ISD over the years until this year, adding “I will not say we did not produce the brochure because of power outage because we did our best waiting for the job to be offered to us”.

Mr Appiah said although his department does have no had electricity suppl for the past eight months, they would have printed the brochure at the printing press of the Ghana National Association of Teachers with whom they have "a long standing relationship”.

He explained they have an outstanding bills to clear and because of that they have been disallowed from buying prepaid credit for their meter for production.

“This was somewhere last year. I made this report to management but they said they will work on it hence the reason for our power outage “he stated.

This year's anniversary brochure which is said to have been produced by the Flagstaff House Communications Bureau, was fraught with errors, inaccuracies and misrepresentation of facts and addressed the President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta as President of Ghana.

At the back of public criticism of the brochure Mr Arthur on Monday issued a statement to apologise to the president and the people of Ghana on behalf of the ISD, which he claimed, authored the brochure.

“The Department, which authored the content of the brochure, accepts responsibility and wishes to unreservedly apologise for the development,” the statement said

But that did not go down well with the staff of the Department who discounted Mr Arthur’s claim, forcing him to retract and apologise to the staff at a durbar on Tuesday. He was subsequently sacked Thursday by the President over the matter.