Cape Coast, Aug. 3, GNA-The Minister of Information, Mr Dan Botwe, on Wednesday advised members of the Cape Coast Municipal Assembly (CCMA) not to engage in partisan politics but rather join forces to facilitate the growth of their communities and the municipality. He pointed out that they were not elected along political lines and they should therefore not engage in party politics at assembly meetings, since such tendencies bring about division and retard development. The Minister was interacting with members of the assembly as part of his three-day working visit to the Central Region.

He said Ghana, was being commended by the international community for good governance, and that for this to be sustained, it was imperative that assembly members played active part in explaining government policies and programmes in their communities for every citizen to facilitate the support of the people.

During an open forum, most of the assembly members said they had benefited from the Minister's visit because he had enlightened them on a number of issues such as the role of his ministry in information dissemination, and appealed to him to help the assembly acquire sanitation equipment.

Earlier, at a meeting with district information officers in the region, Mr Botwe cautioned that his ministry would not tolerate any "inactive officer", and tasked them to evolve effective means of disseminating information, as well as providing the feedback from the people.

"The image of the government should be your concern and therefore report any warning signals and negative issues that might affect the image of government to the regional offices", he declared.

He also tasked them to endeavour to draw up quarterly programmes of action and forward them to his office, stressing that lack of adequate logistics should not be an excuse, since his ministry was doing its best to solve such problems.

On the attachment of some information officers to other ministries, he hinted they would soon be "reshuffled", since some of them had served there "for a long time, making them to believe that they are not part of the information ministry". The district information officers, for their part, pledged to work hard to enhance information dissemination, particularly at the grassroots.

They appealed to district assemblies and government agencies to give them the requisite support in the discharge of their duties.