Deputy Transport minister has backed
literary legend Ama Ata Aidoo after she walked out of a ceremony because her
name was spelt wrongly.
Joyce
Mogtari-Bawa believes that sometimes unconventional action is needed to uphold
professional standards.
Revealing
her own experience with misspellings, she said she has had to receive awards
with her name wrongly spelt.
“I
tend to get very, very irritated as well when people spell your name wrong or
pronounce it badly,” she said on Joy FM’s Super Morning Show Monday.
It
emerged last Saturday at an event organised by the Centre for Gender Studies
and Advocacy (CEGENSA) of the University of Ghana, that both banner and
programme cover had the name as ‘Ama Atta Aidoo’ and not ‘Ama Ata Aidoo’.
Joining in, Hyeokjo Kweon, General Manager
of Hanmac Engineering, the firm to provide technical expertise for the
decongestion plan noted that; “This is your time. Your government is wasting
available time just like this. In Korea, if we schedule a programme to start at
9 a.m., it starts at the same time.”
Commenting
on the embarrassment reportedly widely in the media, the Deputy Transport
Minister noted the incident was misreported.
“I
cross-checked with the Transport Minister and he actually indicated that the
story is not exactly as it was reported,” she said.
She
was, however, unable to provide the accurate version of the story saying
“Something must have happened but how it happened and why I am not too sure”.
Hazarding
a guess, the Deputy Minister said she believes, “there was some
miscommunication of the time”.
She vouched for the punctuality of the two
officials who were sent to represent the expected guest, the Minister of
Transport Fifi Kwettey.
“I
will give my Chief Director some credit...it wasn’t just a case of deliberately
being late” she defended, “if he was late, then there was some
miscommunication, ” Mrs Mogtari-Bawa said.
She
said the stories carried “the most unfortunate headline” and promised that the
ministry would issue a statement to “set the records straight”.
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