File photo
Directors and Accountants of the various regional Centres of the Centre for National Culture (CNC) have appealed to government to grant full retention of its internally generated funds to help maintain its facilities.
They said their facilities across the country were in a very deplorable state, and this could be attributed to the inadequacy of the internal revenue generated from services the institutions provide to the public, which was used to maintain the centres.
The appeal was made on Thursday at a conference for Regional Directors and Accountants of the CNC in Tamale.
The conference was held under the theme:"Mainstreaming Culture in Ghana's Socio-Economic Development Agenda -The role of Stakeholders".
Madam Christiana Carl Oparebea, the Dean of Directors and Accountants of the CNC said the PNDC law 238 of the 1990 backed by a Legislative Instrument established the National Commission on Culture (NCC) and as such should not be seen as an appendage but an integral entity to manage the nation's Creative Arts and Culture for socio-economic development.
She said the NCC and all the 10 Departments under it were mandated by law to provide services to the general public, not to generate funds for government, saying "We are calling for 100 per cent retention". She called for the provision of a financial resource base for the Cultural sector by reactivating the NCC's Cultural Trust Fund, which was granted upon the commission's request by former President John Agyekum Kuffour. Madam Gladys Tang, the Northern Regional Director of the CNC said the theme for the conference was very appropriate since culture cuts across all sectors of the economy and most countries develop through their culture. She expressed dissatisfaction of the low level of recognition of the NCC and the CNC's, in terms of autonomy, and therefore appealed to government to grant the NCC autonomy and help in standardising the regional theatres to attract tourists.
“There is the need to provide periodic training and empowerment of all staff and the funding of national and regional festivals, among others. She urged the directors and accountants to find alternative ways of keeping the Centres alive, whiles waiting on government for financial and logistics support.
Madam Barbara Oteng Gyasi, the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture said government still recognises the significant contribution the Cultural Sector plays in the overall development agenda of the country.
She said government was also adapting technological and economic developments being pursued by the Asian giants like Japan, China, Malaysia and South Korea, by incorporating their cultural values and adoption of the development processes in the overall development agenda of the country.
"We have to evolve a system that would provide guidance for our teeming youth and children to know which foreign cultural practice to embrace and those that must be discarded. In the same vein, the need to dispense or modify some of our own cultural practices has become pertinent" she said.
Madam Gyasi encouraged the Arts and Cultural Institutions to focus on creating and portraying Ghana's rich cultural heritage and encouraged the NCC and the CNC's to research into the various cultural practices in Ghana.
She assured that government and the ministry was fashioning out strategies to facilitate the completion of the Regional Cultural Centres to help build strong relationship between Arts and Culture and also provide a basis for long term national development.
Mrs Janet Edna Nyame, the Executive Director for the National Commission on Culture (NCC) urged the Regional Directors to have an oversight responsibility on the newly created Regions to guide and direct the Acting officers until Directors were sent there.
