By: Korkor Juliet
This year’s Annual General Meeting and National Public Relations Summit was held at Kwahu Nkwatia in the Kwahu South Municipality of the Eastern Region.
The meeting which is aimed at providing professional development and networking for its members brought together various Public Relations and Communications Practitioners across the country.
The President of the Association of Public Relations, Mawuko Afadzinu in an interview with GBC SUNRISE FM noted that the communication industry is filtrated with half-baked professionals and charlatans who disseminate information to the public in an amateurish manner.
Hence, it is the national responsibility of the Institute of Public Relations through the organizing of such programmes to help shape and influence excellent communication in the country. Mr. Afadzinu however, mentioned the issue of trust and credibility as some of the challenges bedeviling most communication practitioners in the country.
One of the biggest challenges we have in the country which transcends into the public and private sector is the issue of trust and how that affects our ability to operate”.
In a panel discussion on the theme of the programme “Staying Credible through rough patches”, the Director General of Public Relations of the Ghana Armed Forces Brigadier General Eric Aggrey-Quashie stated that the security services have certain specific protocols that are observed in sharing of information to the public.
According to him, chastising a security officer publicly for wrongdoing will negatively affect their work. Brigadier General Aggrey-Quashie, however, stressed the need to urgently address the use of social media since most of the pictures and videos that went viral were circulated by the army officers who were deployed and posted to Ashaiman for official duties.
The Managing Director of Magna Carta Reputation Management Consultant in South Africa, Elizabeth Rosalinda Molieni Molekoa emphasized the importance of taking measures as communication practitioners to repose the public’s confidence with the right personnel to help bring back communication credibility.
She further asked the communication practitioner to be strategic in the dissemination of their information to the public.
