The Information Services Department (ISD) is almost in a defunct state, making it impossible to carry out its core mandate as the communication link between the government and the people, Minister-designate for Information, Mustapha Abdul Hamid has revealed.
The agency which operates under the Ministry of Information, according to the Minister-designate, has no computers and monitors to receive and send information across the country and abroad, thereby starving Ghanaians of government policies, programs and activities.
Almost all of its vans purposefully used for community outreach programs have broken down.
Mustapha Hamid appearing before the Appointments Committee of Parliament on Thursday, for public hearing on issues relating to the ministry he has been designated to by the President, told the Committee members that there is an urgent need to revive the agency.
“Mr. Chairman, we need to re-engineer the Information Services Department and retool it and I believe that the men and women in there have the capacities to do a good job.
If I am made a minister, I will ensure that that is done because that is the bedrock of the ministry and once that broken the entire ministry is broken,” he noted.
A cross section of the Ghanaian populace believes that the ISD has become a colonial relic and must be scraped off.
But the Information Minister-designate has a different view.
To him, the survival of government rests on the shoulders of the ISD which is a key component of the state machinery in the dissemination of government policies and programs, thereby; scraping it off will be detrimental to the citizenry.
Mustapha Hamid was responding to a question posed by Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa who sought to find out from the nominee about his vision for the ISD in terms of modernizing it to make it very competitive.
The ISD is the principal Public Relations outfit of the Government both home and abroad. It was established as a small unit during the 1939-1945 war to provide information on the progress of the war.
The Department is represented in all the ten (10) Regions and currently has 191 district offices. ISD is headed by a Director who is assisted by five Divisional heads who also supervise various Sections and Units.
It has the core mandate to disseminate information on government policies, programs and activities.
The Department also has duty to collate and assess public reaction to government policies and as well provides Public Relations support to the Presidency and the Ministries, Departments and Agencies (MDAs).
That notwithstanding, it has the duty to keep Ghanaians abroad abreast of developments in the country.
