Ghana News Agency, (GNA) the nation's only wire service, would be better placed to process and transmit news to primary and secondary consumers when supplied with the state-of-art technology and equipment, Nana Rex Owusu-Ansah, Board Chairman of the Agency, said.
"What the agency needs now is a most up-to-date technology and equipment
to process and transmit news to secondary newscasters or consumers who have limited or zero access to such news," he said.
Speaking at the launch of the GNA's Golden Jubilee anniversary, Nana Owusu-Ansah said the agency as at now, found it difficult to expand its activities to more districts to empower it to cover all government policies and programmes as it used to.
He mentioned government’s on-going programmes such as HIPC Initiative, the Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy (GPRS II), HIV/AIDS and the Millennium Challenge Account in selected districts of the country, which GNA was facing tremendous challenges to cover adequately as a result of stiff competition and rapidly expanding technology.
Nana Owusu-Ansah also appealed to Government to take another look at the salary levels of staff of the Agency to attract more competent professionals and to prevent the mass exodus of top journalists and other professionals.
He noted that whilst expenditure was increasing with the years, government subvention, which is the mainstay of GNA's core business, kept dwindling steadily in terms of amount applied for and approved by Parliament against what was actually released to it.
"To keep the pace, all the major international news agencies and even the local media organizations use the latest in ICT in their business to embark on multimedia operations such as digital news, digital audio news, chat rooms, blogging, digital photos and digital videos.
"However, the continued use of outdated processes and old technology has robbed the GNA of its dynamism and efficacy."
He said the celebration was therefore a clarion call on the good people of Ghana, subscribers, corporate bodies and other institutions to come to aid of Agency.
Nana Owusu-Ansah said GNA welcomed Government's decision through the Public Sector Ministry to give the Agency a new sense of direction and stated that the Board and Management had also crafted a Strategic Medium Term Plan dubbed "GNA@50 and Beyond: Expanding the Frontier."
He said the plan would not only return the Agency to its former values but also transform it into a commercially viable public company.
"...The future direction of GNA will be laid to bare when these reforms are implemented. They will also enable us to ascertain whether GNA should and can remain a state-owned organisation or a profit-making one," he said.
Sharing the background history of GNA, Nana Owusu-Ansah said the Agency established on the eve of Ghana's Independence, was the first news agency to be set up in South Saharan Africa as part of a comprehensive communication policy that sought to harness the information arm of the state to build a viable, united and cohesive newly independent nation-state.
The Board Chairman noted that Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, on the inauguration of GNA, said, the Agency as “a national news agency with reporters in all parts of the country and in important world capitals to reduce the over-dependence on information from the multinational news agencies whose outlook
and interest were often at variance with those of an emergent Ghanaian nation."
"Dr Nkrumah saw the Agency as a medium to counter the biased and distorted image of Africa and for that matter the third world, as peddled by the Western and capitalist press."
Quoting Dr Nkrumah again, he said: "I foresee the day when in the press of the world, any news item warranted by the initials 'GNA' will find an unchallenged place in any newspaper of standing wherever it may be."
Nana Owusu-Ansah said true to this, GNA had lived up to its reputation of providing hard news and solid features, while maintaining rigorous journalistic standards of reporting and editing as well as high professional ethics.
The Agency is celebrating its jubilee with the theme: "Retooling GNA to make it as Relevant as it was in the Beginning."
Activities earmarked include, photo and equipment exhibition showing what the Agency had gone through, an anniversary lecture, documentary on GNA, dinner and awards night and a thanksgiving service.