The National Democratic Congress' Parliamentary Candidate for the Okaikoi Central Constituency, Baba Sadiq Abdullai Abu, has explained how his party's 24-hour economy policy will affect the entertainment and arts industry.

Speaking to Kwame Dadzie on Joy FM's Showbiz A-Z, he noted that one of the ways of integrating creative sector into their 24-hour economy is to pay attention to services provided by event centres.

"One of the things that happened this week is the fact that Bloombar has left the country. If you speak to the owners and operators of the Bloombar, and a number of these guys around some of these outlets, they will tell you the cost of operations is but very expensive, and a huge part of their cost is utility cost that they have to bear.

Again, because the space is not favourable for them, they are not even able to run a morning shift for instance, they are not able to run an afternoon shift that they would have wanted to, because the cost is high to start with. So they like to stick themselves to the night time block," he said.

Baba Sadiq added that the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has plans of easing the burden of utility costs on the operators of these facilities.

"Part of the things we want to do is that a we could offer people who intend to run 24-hour, round the clock services, we could offer them a mitigated cost on their utility prices. We've always made a case for the fact that we are going to give them a special metering system that will help calculate these things," he said.

The NDC's 24-hour economy refers to an economic system where businesses, services, and activities operate continuously, round-the-clock, throughout the day and night. Unlike traditional economies that typically follow standard working hours, a 24-hour economy extends operating times beyond the conventional 9-to-5 schedule

In the meantime, the party is yet to launch its manifesto ahead of the 2024 elections.

In their 2020 manifesto, the NDC promised to implement programmes to support the growth of the film, music and the creative industry to drive job creation and economic growth, Establish a Ministry responsible for the Creative Arts and Digital Economy, Resource nationally recognised creative arts bodies like the Ghana Association of Writers, MUSIGHA, National Film Authority, Ghana Union of Visual Arts(GUVA), among others, and Strengthen regulation to protect the copyright of artistes and ensure that they get value for their works by enforcing the payment of user fees under the Copyright Regulations, 2010 (L.I. 1962).

Other promises they made to the creative industry were to set up a system of legal aid for creative artistes to help fight creative/intellectual theft and plagiarism by others, establish a National Writing Contest and support the promotion of the best literary works, structure the educational curriculum to allow students to appreciate the relevance of culture and creative arts in life and national development and Upgrade NAFTI into a fully-fledged multimedia university for film, arts, theatre and music.

The rest were to Renovate, equip and fund existing Centres for National Culture across the country, and ensure efficient and competent management, and provide seed money for the creation of a special fund for artists including aged and needy creative artistes.