DCE urges extensive rural media coverage

Mr Kwaku Oppong-Kyekyeku Kaakyire, District Chief Executive for Afigya-Kwabre, on Monday urged the media to focus more on rural development reporting.

He said they should do more to highlight the socio-economic challenges facing the rural population by properly articulating their concerns and needs.

Mr Kaakyire was speaking at an Impact Assessment meeting of the GNA/STAR Ghana media auditing and tracking projects, an initiative launched to put a spotlight on how government’s resources were helping to transform the lives of the people, particularly those in rural areas.

The goal is to aid transparency, promote accountability and good governance.

Afigya-Kwabre is one of the six districts in Ashanti and the Eastern regions where the project is being piloted that had achieved spectacular success.

Mr Kaakyire said it had tremendously helped the people to closely follow the activities of the assembly and now know how the resources are being spent.

He spoke of how the project had highlighted some of the developmental challenges in the district and asked that it was sustained for its enormous benefits to be fully enjoyed.

Dr Bernard Otabil, General Manager of Ghana News Agency (GNA), led the Project Management Team at the meeting held at Kodie and attended by assembly members, opinion leaders and department heads.

It provided the platform to assess the impact made and to brainstorm on the way forward.

Dr Otabil said the project would end in November, this year, and underlined the determination of GNA, the nation’s wire service, to forge stronger partnership with the district assemblies to drive rural development.

This would be done under a new project it would be introducing - the New Media Partnership for Rural Development (NeMPARD), the main pillars of which are agriculture, education and health.

He briefed the gathering on the core mandate of the GNA, which has since its inception in 1957, been involved in news gathering, processing and dissemination underpinned by speed, accuracy and objectivity to promote national cohesion and development.

He commended Mr Kaakyire for his zeal and enthusiastic approach to media issues.