Gov’t building capacity of state PROs

Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Minister of Information, addresses participants

The Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has disclosed government’s vision of training Public Relations Officers (PROs) in the various Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs) as a way of addressing the existing capacity gap among state PROs.

He said government would, at the same time, resource the various Public Relations Units of these MDAs to function properly.

A first cohort of 60 state Public Relations Officers serving in the various Ministries, Department and Agencies (MDAs) in the country are undergoing a five-day training to equip them with the professional structure for the practice of public relations and to help government in its communication efforts.

The training programme, being held in collaboration with the Ghana Institute of Journalism (GIJ), started yesterday, August 15, and will end on August 19.,

It is expected to help the PROs gain hands-on experience in the Public Relations profession to boost government communications and to properly inform Ghanaians on government activities.

Speaking during the opening ceremony of the workshop yesterday, the Information Minister said the training was part of the Ministry of Information’s vision of training PROs to tackle the existing capacity gap among state PROs.

Vision

The vision, he emphasised, is to ensure that every government office has a functioning Public Relations Unit that is well resourced with the human resources, logistics and the knowledge to deliver.

“This will make it capable of assisting that government office or that government institution to deliver on its communication obligations. There are about 600 government offices in the country. Not all of them have PROs, let alone functioning PR Units. That is why it has been top of our agenda as a Ministry to enhance the capacities of our PROs,” the Minister said.

Mr Oppong Nkrumah also said the training would enhance the capacity of PROs to build a two-way communication channel between the people and their various institutions in order to collect feedback useful for effective governance.

The Acting Director of the Information Services Department (ISD), David Owusu-Amoah, urged the PROs to be passionate about their job, and take advantage of the opportunity to learn from the resource persons. He said the capacity building exercise had been tailor-made to equip them with relevant skills to ensure effective government communications.

The participants are expected to go through topics such as Overview of the Public Relations Responsibility; Functions of the government Public Relations office; Stakeholder Engagement; PR Writing; Media Relations; Monitoring and Evaluation and Establishing Corporate Communications Policy.