Initiate innovative programmes at Centres for National Culture - Catherine Afeku

The Minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Mrs Catherine Abelema Afeku, has tasked Regional Managers of the Centres for National Culture to initiate innovative programmes that would publicise them positively to the public and make them financially viable.

That, she said, would attract people to the centres to enable them to generate revenue and increase the internally-generated funds of the National Commission on Culture as a whole.

The Tourism Minister, who was addressing the regional directors during a meeting, in Accra on Tuesday, on the implementation of the national cultural policy, said the Ministry was soliciting financial support to revamp the regional theatres.

Mrs Afeku gave the assurance that the regional theatres would provide opportunity to film producers in the country to premiere their movies there towards enhancing the creative arts industry.

She said this year’s National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFAC) would come off in Koforidua in the Eastern Region, adding that her outfit was in talks with some private firms for support.

The Minister noted that proverbs, idioms, storytelling, singing of dirges and wise-sayings, which were prominent part of the Ghanaian culture, were gradually fading out and, therefore, urged the directors to find innovative ways of reviving them.

Madam Janet Edna Nyame, the Executive Director of the National Commission on Culture, in her welcoming address, said the meeting was intended to strengthen the bond between the managers of the regional cultural centres and the Ministry as well as share ideas and strategise ways to make the centres financially viable.

Ghana’s former Ambassador to France, Madam Johanna Swaniker, who is a board member of the Commission, expressed worry over sub-standard sanitary facilities at some rest rooms and tourist sites in the country.

She, therefore, asked the regional managers of the cultural centres and the Ghana Tourism Authority to work collaboratively to improve the standard, saying; ‘‘this does not give good impression about our tourist sites when tourists visit those places’’.

Madam Carl Oparebea, the Central Regional Director of the Centre for National Culture, on behalf of her colleagues, gave a run-down of some challenges facing them, noting that they lacked the requisite logistics to work effectively.

She said the centres served as places for research and, therefore, needed requisite equipment to keep proper records on the country’s cultural heritage and historic sites.

She, therefore, appealed to the government to resource them adequately to executive their constitutional mandate