The Chief Executive Officer of the National Youth Authority (NYA), Pius Hadzide, has called for proper remuneration of some Ghanaian media practitioners.
According to Pius Hadzide, he has observed that some Ghanaian journalists are not properly remunerated by their media owners and called for it to be tackled.
The NYA Boss stated that the issue of remuneration of journalist should be prioritized since their low salaries can cause them to be biased due to inducements that they are likely to get from politicians among others.
“You cannot have a situation where journalists in some instances are not paid and, in some instances, paid 300 cedis and 500 cedis. Those journalists, you are only setting them up to be corrupted people with dubious intents and so on.”
Pius Hadzide
As a sequel to the Media Capacity Enhancement Programme, he suggested that government must begin to focus on financial motivation for journalist.
Sharing his thoughts on the welfare of journalists in Ghana, he stated that government must not be blamed for interference if media owners are forced to pay their workers well.
Frequency authorization backlash
Mr. Hadzide recounted that government suffered backlash when the National Communications Authority (NCA) enforced the frequency reauthorization against defaulting media houses.
To that end, he stated that persons should not unfairly criticize government again if the authorities act against media houses that do not remunerate its workers properly.
“I hope and pray that when the time comes and government takes the bull by the horn and insists that media owners should not just be driven by profits they may make from advertising, but that they should apply some of those monies to paying properly the people who do the real job, nobody will come around to accuse us again of all the negativities that came when we tried to enforce the rules.”
Pius Hadzide
Commenting on claims that the state is spearheading the Media Capacity Enhancement Programme, he clarified that it’s not an effort that is being implemented at the state level although the vision was conceived at the state level.
“The former boss of the NMC has some issues that he seeks to articulate and its important that we pay attention. However, I feel that it is also important that he pays attention to both the history and the genesis of the media capacity and enhancement program. The Information Minister conceived the idea knowing at first hand the challenge involved.”
Pius Hadzide
Media plays an important role
Mr. Hadzide mentioned that the media plays an important part in the socio-economic and even political development of the country and as such, the minister’s vision is to facilitate and create a conducive environment within which the media can thrive.
According to him, the state’s responsibility in the Media Capacity Enhancement Programme largely has been to create the vision and also importantly find the resource. He posited that the role of the state will diminish since the stakeholders involved will run the main project.
Touching on claims that the 250 selected journalists will become press agents for government, he intimated that that wouldn’t be the case because the selection will be done by the stakeholders involved and not government.
“What they are taught, government does not control. Even who teaches them, government does not control… Government intends to facilitate the funding.”
Pius Hadzide
He averred that the exercise is a useful one since there are gaps in the media pratice in the country.
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