The Information Services Department (ISD) established to serve as a public information and outreach arm to enable the Ministry of Information play the role of lead communicator for government, is now shirking its core mandate and resorting to the sale of “Kooko Aduro,” a traditional medicine and engaging in private advertising services.
The New Juaben Municipal wing of the service has for some years now been engaging in individual funeral announcements, advertisements of private services and medicines mostly “Kooko Aduro” on the principal streets of the municipality, chiefly at dawn and early hours of the day.
Investigations conducted by the Daily Heritage revealed that some municipal and district assemblies in the region have disregarded the role and the importance of the ISD, rendering the service dormant. Some of the assemblies are reluctant to even fuel the Information Vans for outreach services because they do not value their importance.
Most equipment used by the service have become obsolete in some districts and municipalities in the region. The ISD in the various assemblies are only used as operators of Public Address Systems during both private and public functions.
The unattractive salaries, coupled with partial functioning of the service among others have resulted in low productivity. Most staff of the ISD are resigning from the service across the country.
A staff of the ISD told the paper under condition of anonymity that “the condition of ISD must be a great concern to government, especially, when government policies and information are being adulterated with partisan propaganda and in some circumstances, hasty media interpretation to the citizenry.”
The ISD is mandated to create awareness of government policies, programs and activities, promote Ghana's international marketing agenda, provide Public Relations support to government Ministries, Departments, Agencies and Ghana's missions abroad, and get feedback from the public to government for policy reinforcement or redirection among others.
However, with the arrival a liberalized economy, with its related liberalized private media landscape and the influx of social media, it has worsened the competition for information flow for ISD which uses archaic way of information dissemination.
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