Research into cultural practices to know their effects, tourism Minister charges NCC
The Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mrs Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, has tasked the National Commission on Culture (NCC) and the Centres for National Culture (CNCs) to research into the country’s cultural practices and come out with findings on their positive and negative consequences.
That, she said, would enable the nation to fashion a dynamic culture that would be beneficial to its socio-economic needs.
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"Such practices that are inimical to our well-being must be discarded and those that are no longer supported by scientific and factual truths and are detrimental to our economy, such as expensive marriages, funerals and naming ceremonies and birthdays, all of which are associated with heavy expenditure and hardships to families and the society at large, must be moderated to reasonable levels,” she said.
Conference
Mrs Oteng-Gyasi made the call when she addressed the 2019 conference of directors and accountants of the CNCs across the country in Tamale, last Thursday on the theme: ‘Mainstreaming Culture into Ghana’s socio-economic development — the role of stakeholders’.
The conference, which is the first of two scheduled for this year, brought together directors and accountants from all the regions to deliberate on pertinent issues facing the national culture, cultural administration and management of the country.
Mrs Oteng-Gyasi also noted that there was the need for the country to evolve a system that would provide guidance for the teeming youth and children to know which foreign cultural practices to embrace and those that must be discarded, while in the same vein the need to modify some of Ghana’s cultural practices had become pertinent.
She said the Tourism Ministry would forge a close collaboration with the Ministry of Education and the Ghana Education Service to draw up a curriculum for the study of Pan-Africanism in basic and senior high schools, to help in the orientation of the young ones.
She urged the participants to work assiduously to change the narrative and rebrand Arts and Culture, as a collective national capital that must be preserved, developed, promoted and presented to the rest of the world.
Scheme of service
The Executive Director of the NCC, Mrs Janet Edna Nyame, who also addressed the conference, said the commission had started the review of the scheme of service with the assistance of the Public Services Commission.
She said plans were also far advanced with the University of Cape Coast to roll out a diploma and certificate sandwich courses for cultural officers in the next academic year.
She announced that a reward scheme was being planned to reward the best centre in terms of dynamism, as well as in-service training for the personnel to enhance their performance.
Year of Return
She also announced that as part of the activities marking the programme, the NCC, in collaboration with the Ghana - Caribbean Chamber of Commerce, would organise a carnival in Kumasi, as well as the National Festival of Arts and Culture (NAFAC), the flagship programme of the commission, which is held bi-annually.
Infrastructure
The Dean of CNC Directors and Accountants Conference, Madam Christiana Carl Oparebea, said the lack of infrastructure and non-maintenance of existing ones was a great worry to the CNCs and cited the deplorable state of the Tamale Centre for National Culture.
She said they were calling for the 100 per cent retention of revenue generated by the CNCs because the NCC and all other 10 departments under it were mandated by law to provide services to the general public and not to generate funds for the government.
She called for the reactivation of the Cultural Trust Fund initiated by President John Agyekum Kufuor in 2004.
Neglect
The Northern Regional Director for the CNC, Madam Gladys Tang, for her part, said the seeming neglect to implement the provisions spelt out in the cultural policy of Ghana was a drawback to the promotion of the country’s culture.
She said the CNC needed to be autonomous to be vibrant again as its agencies had been appendages of other ministries, making budgetary allocations woefully inadequate for the regions and districts for any meaningful research and programmes to be undertaken.
