President Nana Akufo-Addo has appointed Dr Ziblim Barri Iddi to the Tourism, Culture and Arts Ministry as Deputy Minister.
Dr Iddi, a lecturer at the Political Science Department of the University of Ghana, was among a list of Deputy Ministerial nominees released on Wednesday.
The Member of Parliament for Gusheigu in the Northern region holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science (International Relations and Comparative Politics) from Clark University, Atlanta.
The lecturer also holds a Masters in International Affairs and Development (MIAD), Clark University and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from University of Ghana.
His area of specialisation includes International Relations, Comparative Politics and Political Economy.
If approved by Parliament, Dr Iddi would help the sector Minister, Catherine Afeku to achieve President Akufo-Addo’s manifesto promise of:
a. Aggressively develop our tourist sites to bring them to world-class standards, complete with the requisite amenities and facilities.
b. Pursue a deliberate marketing programme to promote our unique historical sites, flora and fauna, waterfalls and other cultural artifacts.
c. Take the staffing of these tourist sites and our hospitality industry as a whole seriously. To improve professionalism in the sector, we will partner with the private sector to set up a state-of-the-art hospitality teaching facility, with an operational hotel, classrooms, kitchens, library, and dormitories.
d. Encourage local communities to take ownership and be invested in the sustainability of tourist attractions in their localities, champion a revenue sharing programme to inject 5% of tourism revenues from fees of well-developed tourist attractions into local community projects.
e. Promote domestic tourism, by making it an aggressive plank of our tourism strategy with a marketing drive centred on entrenching a tourism culture among Ghanaians.
f. Reviewed and actively implement the Culture Policy developed under the Kufuor-led NPP government to give our culture pride of place in our national development.
g. Build a detailed inventory of all our cultural assets, so the nation has a database of these assets.
h. The Copyright Act 2005 (Act 690), among other provisions, provides for the protection of Adinkra symbols and the older Kente designs as expression of folklore.
Ensure that the provisions regarding the protection of Kente and Adinkra designs are strictly enforced against illicit exploitation by foreign interests, to enable the country maximize revenue through the proper marketing of these heirlooms.
i. Establish a Creative Arts Fund to make available funds to modernize and develop the sector.
j. Create a Division of the High Court, focusing on the Creative Arts to deal with all matters relating to intellectual property rights, complete with a dedicated enforcement unit.
k. Establish a Creative Arts Council to coordinate and harmonize the various interests and fragmented associations into a well-functioning body to protect the interests of members.
l. Collaborate with private sector interests to acquire the technology and equipment needed to log creative works, in order to determine true and deserved royalties.
m. Promote regional and district literature, music, dance and drama competitions, particularly in schools and colleges, and
n. Pursue the construction of modern large seating theatres in every regional capital except Accra, beginning with Takoradi, Tamale and Kumasi, as well as setting up an additional Copyright Office in Tamale to cater for the northern sector in addition to the existing ones in Accra and Kumasi.
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