Creative arts: NPP has performed poorly – Ashis

Artiste manager, Nana Poku (Ashis) is not enthused about the performance of the Akufo-Addo government with respect to the creative arts sector.

He believes little attention has been paid to the sector as numerous promises made by the New Patriotic Party during the 2016 electioneering campaign are yet to be fulfilled.

“Apart from the Marine drive which is a word play, we’re yet to see the rest. Our industry is being toiled with; we are reserves to them. They think they have serious business to deal with and our side is the less privileged so when they’re done with the serious business of the country, they’ll come and attend to us” he told Oforiwa on Atinka TV’s Entertainment City, Saturday.

According to Ashis, the creative arts sector has the potential of creating job for the youth and it is high time governments paid attention to it.

“A lot of avenues in entertainment which can provide the youth employment are dying… When you talk,they tag you as an enemy… The musician is hungry; the actor is hungry” he noted.

The NPP manifesto said government will focus on transforming the country into a major Meeting, Incentive, Conference, & Exhibition (MICE) centre, as well as on expanding the tourism sector, through investment, innovation, the pursuit of service excellence and meaningful partnerships. This will enable tourism to become a major revenue- generating sector that provides safe, memorable and enjoyable experience for tourists.

The party also promised to establish a Creative Arts Fund to make available funds to modernize and develop the creative Arts industry in Ghana.

Below are the highlights of what the party promised to do under tourism, culture and creative arts

We will:

a. aggressively develop our tourist sites to bring them to world-class standards, complete with the requisite amenities and facilities

b. pursue a deliberate marketing programme to promote our unique historical sites, flora and fauna, waterfalls and other cultural artefacts

c. take the staffing of these tourist sites and our hospitality industry as a whole seriously. To improve professionalism in the sector, we will partner with the private sector to set up a state-of-the-art hospitality teaching facility, with an operational hotel, classrooms, kitchens, library, and dormitories

d. encourage local communities to take ownership and be invested in the sustainability of tourist attractions in their localities, The NPP will champion a revenue- sharing programme to inject 5% of tourism revenues from fees of well-developed tourist attractions into local community projects

e. promote domestic tourism, by making it an aggressive plank of our tourism strategy with a marketing drive centred on entrenching a tourism culture among Ghanaians

f. review and actively implement the Culture Policy developed under the Kufuor-led NPP government to give our culture pride of place in our national development.

g. build a detailed inventory of all our cultural assets, so the nation has a database of these assets.

h. the Copyright Act 2005 (Act 690), among other provisions, provides for the protection of Adinkra symbols and the older Kente designs as expression of folklore. The NPP will ensure that the provisions regarding the protection of Kente and Adinkra designs are strictly enforced against illicit exploitation by foreign interests, to enable the country maximize revenue through the proper marketing of these heirlooms.

i. establish a Creative Arts Fund to make available funds to modernize and develop the sector

j. create a Division of the High Court, focusing on the Creative Arts to deal with all matters relating to intellectual property rights, complete with a dedicated enforcement unit

k. establish a Creative Arts Council to coordinate and harmonize the various interests and fragmented associations into a well-functioning body to protect the interests of members.

l. collaborate with private sector interests to acquire the technology and equipment needed to log creative works, in order to determine true and deserved royalties.

m. promote regional and district literature, music, dance and drama competitions, particularly in schools and colleges, and

n. pursue the construction of modern large seating theatres in every regional capital except Accra, beginning with Takoradi, Tamale and Kumasi, as well as setting up an additional Copyright Office in Tamale to cater for the northern sector in addition to the existing ones in Accra and Kumasi.