Lumping together tourism, arts, culture in one ministry 'senseless' – Rex Omar

The Chairman of the Ghana Music Rights Organisation (GHAMRO) Rex Owusu Marfo, popularly known as Rex Omar has expressed his disapproval about what, in his opinion, is the government’s little efforts to develop the creative sector.

In his view, it is wrong for the government to combine huge sectors like tourism, culture and the creative industry under one ministry, a situation which he says has rendered the ministry ineffective with less developmental drive to propel the creative arts, especially.

“I really, personally don’t understand why our politicians think that it is smart to put creative industry and culture together with tourism and make it one ministry. To me it doesn’t make sense,” the highlife legend explained in an interview with Natalia Andoh on Class 91.3FM’s Touch of Class on Friday, 1 November 2019.

For him, tourism alone can generate billions of revenue for the country, adding that the untapped employment potential of the creative sector is not being harnessed for the benefit of the nation.

“I’m advocating that they should decouple the creative arts and culture from the tourism and make it a stand-alone ministry so that we can have the right technocrats to structure this thing because it will employ a lot of our youth and bring us foreign exchange,” he proposed.

He wants Ghana to re-examine the creative industry critically and establish proper structures with enough investment as being done in sports, adding that: “The creative industry employs far much more people than even sports”

“I don’t understand why our politicians don’t get it,” he said.