A Deputy Minister of Information, Baba Jamal, recently went out on a familiarisation tour of the country. In one of his meetings with staff of the Information Services Department (ISD), Baba Jamal, is reported to have admonished the ISD staff to embellish government policies and programmes to Ghanaians, virtually sending them on a lying crusade. What more can be worse? Well, he threatened anybody who would not take this erroneous command with a sack. A statement signed by the honourable in response to the public outcry at his outburst said his comments were just a benign joke. As a Deputy Minister of Information, my understanding is that he is supposed to be a spokesperson for the government we have voted for on what it has done and is planning to do. However, reflections on this admission by the minister has left me wondering where to draw the line between the truths and the jokes in what he has told the nation already as Information Minister. Less than a year into the administration of the NDC , another deputy minister of the same ministry told the Daily Graphic that 'government had put about 1.6 million people into jobs. Mr. Okudjeto Ablakwa, as part of his job, informed Ghanaians that the government had placed these job beneficiaries in several sectors including by-day construction. The last time I checked, the official figures did not comprehensively support Mr. Ablakwa’s claims. The world fact book indicates that the country’s unemployment rate still hovers around 20 per cent, meaning some three million people were still out of job. Indeed , the Minister of Employment and Social Welfare and a senior member of this administration was in parliament denying knowledge of the supposed employment figures. In his own words the issue of the “1.6 million jobs is history”, he said and added that the government was unaware of these employment figures. I want to believe that was Ablakwa’s own way of displaying humour. But that “joke” did not fly because it was not funny. Now to what I think has been the most unpardonable slip from no mean a person than the spokesperson of our president. Last week when Ken Korankye’s one-man newspaper published a screaming headline story that the good old Prof. was acquiring for himself a “mansion”, it behoved Efo Koku Anyidoho to come and do what we pay him to do; clear our president’s name of the malice orchestrated by a journalist who clearly did not do his job well. Unfortunately, he goofed. Efo Koku went on radio to say the said facility was a “token” from an estate developer to the president, when the facts did not support that. Was that another joke? Or something we should take seriously? Communication, especially if it has to do with the first man of the land, deserves more seriousness than it has received already. I think government’s P.R people should get their acts together before it’s too late. It’s becoming one joke too many. I’m getting really scared about what the next joke may be.