MoGCSP & ISD TRAIN ISD OFFICERS FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION ON SWCES 15th FEBRUARY, 2024

A day’s training workshop for the roll out of a pending nation-wide public education and sensitization campaign on the Single Window Citizens Engagement Service [SWCES], has taken place in Tamale, the Northern Regional capital, this Thursday, February 15, 2024. The training workshop was organized by the Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection [MoGCSP] in collaboration with the Information Services Department [ISD].

Group Picture; Participants & Trainers

 

Some eight Regional Information Officers and their respective metropolitan, municipal as well as district information officers, were the main participants in the training as these officers are the professionals clothed with the requisite skills and ground experience to execute the public education and sensitization campaign on the SWCES in the coming weeks. The said ISD officers were drawn from the Upper East, the Ahafo, Bono and Bono East Regions. The rest came from the Northern Region, Upper West, Savannah and North East Regions.

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The Gender Ministry birthed the Single Window Citizens Engagement Service under its Social Protection Directorate as part of integrated efforts to bolster the coordination of social protection in Ghana. The SWCES comes on stream as a single-entry platform for the reporting, collection and resolution of grievances relating to the country’s major social protection programmes and systems including the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty [LEAD], the Labour Intensive Public Works [LIPW], the Ghana School Feeding Programme [GSFP], the National Health Insurance Scheme and others such as the ECG, PI-CLASS, the Ghana National Household Registry and the SOCO project.

Making a presentation on the SWCES, a staff of the Gender Ministry, Naa- Dedei Antie disclosed that, the SWCES has some very laudable objectives which include to increase transparency and accountability in the operation of social protection services, simplify the administrative processes, procedures as well as reduce time and cost of service provision. The SWCES the officer noted, will also ultimately improve the quality of service provided to citizens and beneficiaries.

 

Meanwhile in her remarks earlier to commence the training, the new Acting Director of the Information Services Department, Dr. Nafisa Mahama who assumed office about a fortnight ago, observed that, the ISD has had very successful and results-filled collaborations with the Gender Ministry and other institutions in the past. She therefore stressed that, the choosing of ISD again to undertake the SWCES campaigns, certainly hinges on those past success stories of her outfit. 

Ag. ISD Dir., Dr. Nafisa Making Her Remarks

Dr. Nafisa vouched for the credibility and work ethic of her officers, saying “given the needed logistics and support, they can perform and perform beyond anybody’s imagination”. She added that, as the information officers had now been schooled and equipped with the core messages and objectives of the SWCES, there was no reason to doubt the ability of her staff to deliver on the assignment before them. According to her, one vital thing that makes the ISD’s public campaigns rich and unique is the quality feedback the officers usually return from the field with, noting that such feedback often serves as important pointers as to how effective a particular intervention/programme is going, what needs to be amended to induce the desired impact and so on.

The ISD Director revealed that, the SWCES can be likened to the national information contact centre that was opened and manned by ISD staff during the COVID 19 pandemic, assuring the Gender Ministry that, the staff are pretty familiar with the workings of such call management centres.

Participants at the training made series of inputs to the various presentations and also asked questions relating to adequacy of information materials earmarked for the campaigns and the duration the whole campaign is expected to last among other relevant concerns regarding the SWCES.