Let’s synergise to fight coronavirus - GJA president

Mr Roland Affail Monney, the President of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), on Monday urged journalists to synergise in the fight against the Coronavirus.

He said: “The battle against the virus is winnable if all media practitioners will put their energies and resources together, focus on the same direction and tailor programmes targeted at challenging the minds of the citizenry in the fight against the dreaded virus”.

Mr Monney said this during the donation of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) worth GHC76,480.00 by JN Products, a cosmetic and detergent manufacturing company, to the Association in support of the fight against the virus.

The items included sanitizers, liquid soaps, nose masks and dispensers.

He said the easing of the restrictions by President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo did not defeat the fact that the virus was still prevalent and that journalists must adhere to the protocols to keep safe.

“As journalists, we need to scale-up our efforts to sensitise and educate the public on the realities of the pandemic because some people are of the view that the virus is not real,” he said.

Additionally, he said journalists were not immune to the virus in any way and could get infected when exposed to it adding; “Journalists in Togo and other African nations have died of the virus”.

He gave the assurance that all media houses would receive their share of the PPE and called on other organisations and individuals to support the Association and its members in the fight against the virus.

Mr Joseph Nyarko, the Chief Executive Officer of JN Products, said the donation was in recognition of the role journalists played at the forefront of educating and informing the public on what they needed to know about the pandemic.

He said the items would help protect men and women of the inky profession against the dreaded virus.

Mrs Linda Asante-Agyei, the GJA Vice-President, expressed gratitude to the company for the kind gesture and that it would go a long way to protect members in their role to educate and inform the public on the dos and don’ts of the COVID-19 pandemic.