Brand Ghana Office waste of time, money : Lamptey
A member of the Progressive People’s Party, Mr Richmond Lankwei Lamptey, has described the Brand Ghana office as a waste of time and scarce resources.
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He said the continuous existence of the Brand Ghana office was a cause of financial loss to the state.
In an interview, Mr Lamptey, who is also the General Manager of Digicut Productions, an advertising agency, said one could not brand a nation that had numerous challenges, including energy crises.
He asked: “What is Ghana’s brand identity? If we are able to answer that, we should also answer objectively the image current and potential investors, tourists, donors also have of the country.”
He said the Brand Ghana office must not do anything to further damage the country’s image and waste scarce national resources.
“This country has consistently shown a failure to plan,” he stated and concluded that it did not bode well for any branding.
According to Mr Lamptey, it takes time for a brand to be built and “we should make time to plan and execute different activities that build Brand Ghana”.
“Anything short of this will not inure to the benefit of the country, much more brand Ghana in a positive light.”
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He said branding Ghana was not the activity of a group of people who were put together and paid with the country’s scarce resources, but a combination of all the hard decisions we needed to take as a people with a sense of urgency.
“For instance, there is the need to avoid the situation where the President says something on an issue and a minister says something else. It is a serious branding faux pas! Our officials dress improperly for events. Even the way one sits at table and eats communicates something to all who are watching. Promising and not delivering is a serious dent on the image of the person involved and affects the Ghana Brand and it doesn’t help when government officials come out to insult their perceived opponents and vice versa on every subject they do not agree on,” Mr Lamptey argued.
In his view, branding Ghana should have no political colour.
South Africa
In what looks like our equivalent of the Arts Centre, Mr Lamptey mentioned South Africa as fully networked such that when you buy items and you show your receipts at the airport on your way out, they give you back all the VAT components because you will not use those in the country. He asked: Can we boast of same here?
He said newborn babies could be given their birth certificates before they were discharged with their mothers and that all hospitals and clinics nationwide should be networked and then we could start monitoring our population correctly. That helps in planning and would be a good resource for businesses.
Mr Lamptey expressed regret that “in 2015 people are still defecating and urinating in public. Is this an activity we should condone? Why should people build without toilets in their homes? Are we so powerless that we cannot enforce our laws? That is the brand we are building!”