Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong-Nkrumah has commended the official tourism promotion program of the Volta Region, 'Visit Volta'.

He said the initiative, which has renowned media personalities who hail from the Region as ambassadors, was already affecting visitor numbers.

The Minister who was engaging media practitioners in the Region as part of a duty tour, said the growth of the tourism industry hinged on the smooth facilitation of investment processes, and therefore appealed to the media to help ensure the public sector played its mandated role in that regard.

“Here in the Volta Region, you are embarking on a fantastic initiative- the “Visit Volta” initiative, and already the tourism numbers that are coming in, if you check from the hotels, are beginning to demonstrate, over the weekends, that people are responding to it.

“If people in the public sector who should facilitate the exercises of these hotels, tour operators or visitors, ensure that security, public services, electricity, etc are functioning so that people are comfortable when they come and visit volta and experience Ghana. If people frustrate this, the “Visit Volta” initiative will not succeed".

And so, we need you to help put out the word that the public sector operators and we the members of the public sector, have to support for this to be successful,” Mr Oppong Nkrumah said.

He said the recovery of the economy from Covid was top of the government's agenda and was injecting 100 billion cedis into the economy, which would benefit private sector growth in particular.

The Minister said the government's vaccination drive was among its major plans for opening up the country and should be supported by the media especially in the area of vaccine tolerance.

Visit Volta is a joint initiative of the Volta Regional Coordinating Council, the Ghana Tourism Authority, and the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), and was designed to redirect tourist traffic to the Region.

The ambassadors, which includes journalist of the year, Bernard Avle, and media practitioner Kafui Dey, have been stimulating interest in the tourism sector in the Region with media activity.

The initiative coincides with the Fifth Volta Trade and Investment Fair coming up in November 2021, and a series of tours are being undertaken to herald the event.

Dr Archibald Yao Letsa, Volta Regional Minister attested to the cooperation of the media in the Region on Government’s agenda and said a close working relationship flourished between them and the regional coordinating council.