Hotel operators are demanding a deepened engagement with government to ensure the prudent management of the Tourism Development Fund.

This follows government’s appointment of Abraham Tetteh as Administrator for the fund. The appointment has raised questions given that the Tourism Act empowers only the Board of Directors of the Tourism authority and a representative of the Controller and Accountant-General to administer the fund.

President of the Ghana Hotels Association, Hebert Acquaye told Joy Business, upholding provisions in the law is key to ensure the fund is not mismanaged.

“For us as hotels and contributors, we’d hope that the Act and the L.I will be followed to the letter. Once these regulations are followed, there shouldn’t be any problem. One of the key ingredients of making this successful is having a very good public-private partnership.

"Indeed it is out of the PPP that idea of the fund was conceived and pushed. And despite the fact that over the last two years there hasn’t been any of these PPP meetings, it’s our expectation that the forum will continue to play a very meaningful role in the sector,” he said.

Meanwhile, the association says it is independently taking steps to ensure transparency and accountability in the management of the Tourism Fund. Mr. Acquaye explains this is part of the Ghana Tourism Industry Transparency Initiative currently being piloted in some selected districts in the Central region.

“We have embarked on a project sponsored by STAR Ghana to help us establish an aggregator platform. We would install a software which would allow us also for hotels to go into the system and to make inputs of all payments that they make into the fund. Likewise, we are involving all our stakeholders so that it should be possible to also know of future disbursements that will be made from the fund. We are currently running a pilot of four district and municipal assemblies in the Central region,” he said.

The Ghana Hotels Association will Wednesday, March 26, 2014 hold a stakeholder deliberation on the initiative at Winneba in the Central Region..