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With just 21 days to the commencement of the year-long ‘Ghana 60 Years On’ anniversary celebrations, the planning committee has since received just a single donation of GH¢300,000 from Unibank.

“So far, we have only one contribution from Unibank“, Chairman of the Planning Committee, Mr Ken Amankwah, revealed at a press briefing at the Flagstaff House in Accra on Monday.

“I want to reinforce our appeal again to corporate Ghana, particularly private enterprises, to be generous to be able to see our programme through,” he said.

The chairman in his engagement with the media explained that although some corporate entities have made pledges to support the celebrations, they are yet to redeem their pledges.

The President, Nana Akufo-Addo, constituted a 30-member committee to plan a “modest” 60th Independence celebration under the Theme, ‘Mobilising For Ghana’s Future’ with a proposed budget of GH¢20,0000 to be sourced from corporate and private entities.

Anniversary budget is for a year’s activities

Outlining activities for the celebrations, the chairman emphasised that contrary to concerns by some section of the public that the proposed budget would be expended on a one-off event; the amount would cover the year-long activities to be replicated in all regions of the country.

Mr Lord Commey, a member of the committee responding to a question on public criticism of the relevance of expending such amount for the celebrations when they could be used for other socially useful ends, such the budget is a complete departure from events of such nature in the past.

Ghana @ 50 cost 75 million dollars

He argued that the budget amount for this year long programme is far less that the amount used by the previous government for similar celebration with activities lasting just some few days.

“We don’t want to sound political in trying to respond to some of the political talk outside there, 10 years ago, what I know about $75 million was spent on Ghana@ 50”.

March past alone at Ghana @59 cost GH¢4million

He added that available records indicate that the 59th anniversary celebrations budget of the march past alone at the independence square was close to GH¢4 million.

He argued further that 10 years on the Nana Addo government is spending just $4million on a year-long program which is indicative of the government’s commitment to modest expenditure.

“I am sure that at the end of this whole exercise, Ghanaians would be very proud of it”, he assured.

A line up activities for the first phase of the celebrations would include the launch of Jubilee Tech Start-Up challenge aimed at unveiling innovation that would boost governance, business, health and education, among others.

Other programmes would include a documentary recounting the struggle to independence, a national flag draping campaign, a national festival on culture, among many others.

Logo not plagiarised

The communications unit of the committee debunked assertions by sections of the public that the logo for the anniversary was plagiarised.

The logo has since its unveiling has attracted many comments, especially on social media platforms with many suggesting that the design was plagiarized.

But the committee says it settled on the logo after soliciting for a number of artworks from various designers.

“We ensured that we saw the process with which they were going through in designing their logos”, Jefferson Sackey of the communication working group of the committee said.

He noted that checks done by the committee has not found the logo to belong to any other entity.