Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Minister of Information
The Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has charged the Ghanaian media and other stakeholders in the hospitality fraternity to employ innovative programmes that will promote and market the newly refurbished tourist centres in the country.
Such innovative programmes, the Minister said, would go a long to attract a lot more Ghanaians and people from all over the world.
The Minister made the call during a sod cutting event for the commencement of rehabilitation and modernization works on the Kwame Nkrumah Memorial Park (KNMP) in Accra yesterday.
According to him, this has become necessary, particularly as the COVID-19 pandemic had negatively impacted patronage of the country’s tourist centres and revenues that accrue to the state from the sector due to restrictions on mobility.
“To our colleagues in the media, our charge to you is that you develop innovative programmes that attract thousands of people, not just to this site; for example, the National Museum that was just refurbished and opened and the many other tourist sites that we are investing in.
“We charge you to develop innovative programmes that bring a lot of Ghanaians and people from all over the world to visit these sites and, together, we will be able to bring the Ghanaian economy back to where we want it to be,” he said.
The Information Minister further revealed that in 2019, Ghana’s tourism sector had raked in GHC3.3 billion in revenue to the state with a total of 1.1 million tourist arrivals.
He, however, indicated that the advent of the pandemic had sharply depressed the sector, declining arrivals in 2021 by 88.3 per cent.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah said to recover the sector, and set it back to its pre-pandemic levels, the media must play a critical role in developing innovative programmes that will “drive domestic tourism and attract foreign nationals to visit our tourist sites”.
About The Author
