Deputy Transport minister has backed literary legend Ama Ata Aidoo after she walked out of a ceremony because her name was spelt wrongly.

Joyce Bawa-Mogtari believes that sometimes unconventional action is needed to uphold professional standards.

Revealing her own experience with misspellings, she said she has had to receive awards with her name wrongly spelt.

“I tend to get very, very irritated as well when people spell your name wrong or pronounce it badly,” she said on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show Monday.

It emerged last Saturday at an event organised by the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CEGENSA) of the University of Ghana, that both banner and programme cover had the name as ‘Ama Atta Aidoo’ and not ‘Ama Ata Aidoo’.

Appalled by the mistake, the 74-year old celebrated writer and poet walked out of the event that was to honour her for her literary contributions in literature spanning more than 50 years.

“I think it simply doesn't augur well for all of us”, Mrs Joyce Bawa-Mogtari criticised the academic institute observing that the organisers could have googled her name.

According to her, not much research was devoted to an important thing as the spelling of a person’s same.

Applauding the move, she pointed out that “sometimes we need to set an example and then people will sit up”.

But after the host, Kojo Yankson pointed out that her ministry was lambasted by the Korean ambassador after her officials turned up late, Joyce Bawa-Mogtari rationalized the incident.

The Korean ambassador Lyeo Woon-Ki expressed his displeasure at the officials of the Transport ministry after they turned up 43 minutes late for a workshop.

The programme was to discuss a plan to decongest Accra by 2035 with $1.5million funding from the Korean government plus technical support.

Mr Woon-Ki said “Ghanaians should learn to respect time because it is a valuable and precious resource.”

Joining in, Hyeokjo Kweon, General Manager of Hanmac Engineering, the firm to provide technical expertise for the decongestion plan noted that; “This is your time. Your government is wasting available time just like this. In Korea, if we schedule a programme to start at 9 a.m., it starts at the same time.” 

Commenting on the embarrassment reportedly widely in the media, the Deputy Transport Minister noted the incident was misreported.

“I cross-checked with the Transport Minister and he actually indicated that the story is not exactly as it was reported,” she said. 

She was, however, unable to provide the accurate version of the story saying “Something must have happened but how it happened and why I am not too sure”.

Hazarding a guess, the Deputy Minister said she believes, “there was some miscommunication of the time”.

Deputy Transport minister Joyce Bawa-Mogtari

She vouched for the punctuality of the two officials who were sent to represent the expected guest, the Minister of Transport Fifi Kwettey.

“I will give my Chief Director some credit...it wasn’t just a case of deliberately being late” she defended, “if he was late, then there was some miscommunication, ” Mrs Mogtari-Bawa said.

She said the stories carried “the most unfortunate headline” and promised that the ministry would issue a statement to “set the records straight”.

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