‘Include maritime trade in curricula of media institutions’

The Minister of Transport, Mr Fifi Kwetey, has called for the inclusion of a course on Maritime Trade and Transport in the curricula of media institutions, to help journalists specialise in the area.

He said the maritime sector played a major role in the country’s transport sector and there was, therefore, the need for a crop of journalists to be knowledgeable in the sector in order to adequately inform the public about it.

Mr Kwetey made the call at the opening of the 5th Maritime seminar for journalists drawn from the print and electronic media in Accra on Wednesday.

It had the theme, “Current Developments in the Maritime sector - Ghana’s Readiness”.

Maritime trade

 Underscoring the importance of the maritime transport subsector, Mr Kwetey said more than 90 per cent of the country’s volume of international trade was maritime-based, while more than 70 per cent of the government’s internal revenue was also sourced from activities in the subsector.

He also announced that plans were far underway to develop a truck village in Kpone in order to relocate the Golden Jubilee Container Terminal to Kpone to provide the needed capacity for revamping operations and by so doing deal with the human and vehicular traffic in the vicinity of the port.

On new developments in the sector, he said the injection of $1.5 billion investment for the expansion of the Tema Port by a private investor had received parliamentary approval for tax and other duty exemptions.

In addition, Mr Kwetey said work had already been completed on the construction of the Reefer Terminal at the Tema Port to expand its capacity to meet the demand for more refrigerated cargo points at a cost of $20 million, adding that both the Tema and the Takoradi ports were being expanded to enhance their operational capacities and efficiencies.

He also said regulations and legal regimes had been passed to strengthen the legal maritime environment.

Ghana Shippers Authority 

For her part, the Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Shippers Authority (GSA), Ms Sylvia Asana Dauda Owu, said it was the belief of the authority that the carrier of the news must first understand it to effectively disseminate it and this had been the underlying principle for organising the seminar.  

In line with this, she said the GSA was, therefore, committed to ensuring that shippers and the media were provided with the necessary information that would enhance their understanding and appreciation of the maritime industry.

The President of the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA), Mr Affail Monney, who also addressed the participants, noted that capacity building had proven to be the most effective means of upgrading the efficiency of journalists.

He called on the media practitioners to inject a high degree of professionalism, circumspection and objectivity into the coverage of processes leading to the November national polls.