GII unhappy with state bodies buying full newspaper pages to congratulate Mahama

The Ghana Integrity Initiative (GII) on Monday said it has noted with regret that some state institutions have taken full pages of newspapers to congratulate the President, John Dramani Mahama for his inauguration and assumption of office.

It said those institutions did that without even drawing the attention of the reading public to any products and services they provided, qualifying it as a commercial advertisement.

An official statement issued and signed by Vitus A. Azeem, the Executive Director and copied to the Ghana News Agency said, “GII is of the view that this is a waste of state resources and should cease immediately. Some of these state institutions do not normally advertise their services and have no justification to use state resources in this way.”

“GII believes that these institutions, if they want to congratulate the President, they can use more ingenious and cheaper ways, such as letters, press releases or congratulatory cards, to convey their messages rather than using state resources this way.”

The statement said institutions that did that included the Local Enterprises and Skills Development Programme (LESDEP), the Ghana Revenue Authority, Ghana Cocoa Board and the Ghana Aids Commission.

“GII calls on the President to order that this stops immediately as it only serves the purpose of the heads and management of these institutions trying to attract the President’s attention for whatever reason,” he said.

The statement said the GII had no problem with purely commercial institutions such as AGAMs Group and ZOOMLION doing the same although it also had the potential of unnecessarily wanting to please the President and attracting his attention for potential patronage of their services and products by the government.

“GII feels morally obliged to draw the Ghanaian public’s attention to this, especially when it comes from government sub-vented institutions and agencies,” it added.

Source: GNA