Ministry of Tourism Joins In Search For Castro

After hearing the sad news concerning the supposed drowning of Theophilus Tagoe popularly known as Castro and amateur actress Janet Bandu that most people believe happened on Sunday 6th July, 2014, people are assisting in diverse ways to look for Castro and Janet either dead or alive.

These two national assets case has finally gotten to the extent that we have heard the tourism ministry is putting measures in place to take part in search of them. According to the P.R.O. of Ministry of Tourism Prince Boakye Boateng, he said the issue is sensitive so the speculations and the emotions people are making should come down and if there is any suggestion or contribution that will yield to find them, we should put them into consideration.

�Where the incident happened is a tourism facility and to be able to operate such facilities you need authorization from Ghana Tourism authority for registration and issuing of license that permits you to operate. When you get the license, there are rules and regulation which includes the fact that such places should have life guards. We want to investigate and find out if there were life guards at the time, whether there were enough jackets for patrons to use in case accident occurs, what security measures there were as of the time, and if the boats they used were registered,� Mr Boakye said.

He added that, immediately the incident occurred, the minister got in touch with the head of Ghana Tourism Authority that he should dispatch the Tema Regional Hospital to go there and find out what really is happening there.

�Tema is the administrative building under which Ada falls, so quickly they were assigned to be at the venue where the incident happened to know what exactly the issue was to assist the security agencies do their work. So what we're doing now is not to take away the responsibility of the security agency. By our regulations, we want to know that, are their facilities conforming to standard? He said it's not because it's Castro but we all know he is a celebrity. We are not saying the facilities are not ready. We just want to be sure if they are in their proper shape or not,� he added.

When he was asked what will be the penalty when after their investigation it comes up that their facilities were not in order, this is what Mr. Boakye said: �It can be possible that we can close up their activities, we can charge them and there are so many ways we can deal with them.� During the interview, he was asked the position of the Ministry of tourism with regards to safety and this is what he said: �we take safety serious, that is why I was saying before they get the go ahead to operate with their facilities, we make sure their license is valid to authorize them to work because they are all part of the safety measures.�

He added that the Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts is bringing a project which was launched not long ago and coincidentally it was held at Ada. We went there with the United Nations World Tourism Organizations and are doing something called 'Coast Project.' It's a coalition for sustainable action against poverty which has people trained for the Marine so that they would know the safety measures. They have trained about thirty five people on two occasions.

�We have done our best but it may not be enough, it's a step in the right direction,� he concluded.

Source: Daniel Lartey