A member of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) in the Upper East Region, Abdallah Salifu Jonathan believes the media monitors appointed by the government were foot soldiers of the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP).
Aside from that, there was a conflict of interest in the appointment of the media monitors, Mr. Abdallah believes these individuals are unproductive and contribute to the financial challenges of the country at the moment.
The government of the day has offered jobs to some individuals at the Ministry of Information and the Jubilee House with a responsibility on them to track and report on government policies and programs being discussed on the radio.
These individuals, according to Mr. Abdallah, are provided with a desktop computer and connected to the internet service to monitor political programs of some selected radio stations across the country are redundant and may be kicked out of their offices if Ghana finalized plans to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a financial bailout.
“When you go to the presidency as we speak, there are people who are sitting there, you know their job? We are here talking, we are on social media, Facebook, and other things. They [media monitors] are the people who are watching us and they report to some people what is going on. That is all that they do as a job. They call them media monitors.”
“They are paying them huge monies. No wonder you get to the presidency and the number of people who are working under the president is uncountable. In fact, throughout the history of this country, it is only under President Akufo-Addo that you don’t even know the number of people working in the presidency. They keep on giving contradictory figures. Under an IMF program, they will tell you that reduce that number. Some of these people have no jobs. You can’t be paying people necessarily because they are foot soldiers.”
The outspoken communicator of the NDC who disclosed this on A1 Radio’s ‘Daybreak Upper East’ stated that these media monitors are being paid with the taxpayer’s money for no work done.
Source: A1Radioonline.com|101.1Mhz|Joshua Asaah|Bolgatanga|Ghana
