News Editors Receive Training To Report On Extractive Sector

Pensplusbytes a Civil Society Organization, has engaged news editors to build their capacities on the emerging trends of the extractive sector to enable them create awareness on the oil and gas issues.

The three-day Training is part of pensplusbytes 'enhancing the role of the Media in promoting the Oil and Gas Sector Transparency Accountability' project in collaboration with Ghana Oil and Gas for Inclusive Growth (GOGIG).

Mr Fred Avonyo, a facilitator, in opening remarks, at the training workshop in Koforidua, noted that the objective of the workshop was to change the discussion from politics in the newsroom to focus on oil and gas matters by engaging the editors who were the gatekeepers in the newsrooms.

He indicated that at the end of the training they expect that the editors would be challenged to put oil and gas stories on their front pages to better inform their readers.

Mr Avenyo said it was the media's role to focus on the extractive sector to be able to inform the masses where the oil money goes, what it was used for and whether the generality of Ghanaians were benefiting from the oil and gas money.

Mr Samuel Bekoe, from GOGIG, said GOGIG was ensuring that oil and gas resources were managed in a transparent manner by empowering all the accountability actors like the media and parliament to hold people managing the sector accountable for the benefit of Ghanaians.

He said the training was therefore one of the avenues to empower the media to be able to engage the public through its publications to demand explanations and answers from those managing the sector and governments as well.

According to him with the experience from countries such as Nigeria where oil and gas which was supposed to be a blessing but had become a curse, GOGIG with funding from the UKAID, was leaving no stone unturned to make sure that Ghana's own become a blessing where every Ghanaian would benefit from the resources.

The editors were selected from the Ghana News Agency (GNA) Business and Financial Times, EIB Network, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), Multimedia Group, Graphic Communication and others.