The Editors Forum, Ghana (EFG) has disassociated itself from the 2007/2008 Audit Report of the Auditor-General which sought to imply that some of its members were paid some amount of money to defend government programmes during radio discussions.
The audit report, which some media houses have intercepted, details how GH�1.5 million (�15 billion old cedis) was withdrawn from the Tema Oil Refinery (TOR) Recovery Levy by the previous administration to pay off some journalists for propaganda purposes. The draft audit report also states that a total of GH�6 million (the equivalent of �60 billion old cedis) from the Petroleum Dept Recovery, the Divesture, the Multilateral Dept Relief Initiative and the HIPC Fund accounts was misapplied on a government communications strategy.
According to the report, the monies were released by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning and paid to some individuals who formed part of an �Editors Forum� and media executives.
A release signed by Ajoa Yeboah-Afari, the Chairperson of EFG, stated that the forum had in no way benefited from any such money. �For the records, the EFG was initially funded by UNDP, and has never applied to the Ministry of Information, or any government body, for funding and the EFG has NEVER received any money from the Ministry of Information�, she emphasized.
She stated vehemently that as far as she was concerned, the media body of which she�s the Chairperson is the only one known as the EFG, and said �it would be very helpful if the names of the people who signed for the money under reference could be published for the sake of transparency and for the avoidance of doubt�.
Meanwhile the then Minister of Information Stephen Asamoah Boateng, under whose tenure the said report has been conducted, has explained that the policy to pay media practitioners predated his appointment, and that he was simply implementing the government�s communications strategy programme that had been accepted by Cabinet in a meeting in 2006.
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