The Information Services Department (ISD) has raised alarm over the state of Ghana’s historical records, warning that the absence of proper backup systems puts the nation’s heritage at grave risk.
Speaking to JoyNews, ISD’s Mr. Richard Attah lamented that the archives spanning from pre-colonial times to date remain highly vulnerable due to lack of digitization and poor infrastructure.
“The major challenge we have here is we don’t have backup of all that we have here. Look at the place—it needs to be renovated. We actually want to digitize all that we have, so we need somebody to come and sponsor and give us equipment and other things that will enable us to computerize all this we have from pre-colonial to date,” he explained.
He cautioned that without urgent intervention, Ghana could lose centuries of history in the event of disaster, emphasizing “If we’re not able to have a backup of this and there is a fire outbreak or something happens, that means we’ve lost all the history of Ghana from pre-colonial, pre-independence to date.”
According to him, the archives are not only a national treasure but also serve as a vital research hub for academics at home and abroad. “It’s like a research center for most of the students—university students from even outside come here for research work and we’re able to help them.”
The concerns have drawn reactions from Parliament’s Committee on Information and Communications. Mr. Charles Owiredu, Deputy Ranking Member of the Committee and MP for Abirem, described the state of the Right to Information (RTI) Commission and related facilities as a mixture of “the good, the bad, and the ugly.”
“I’ll probably rate the RTI office as the good, then the bad will probably be the media room that we went to, and the ugly will be the archives and the library. That’s my classification,” he remarked.
Mr. Owiredu called for stronger collaboration between stakeholders and pledged parliamentary support to secure resources, noting “See us as an ally and then we’ll make sure that all the funds that you deserve to be able to properly stand on your feet, we’ll push to get these funds to be able to operate as a professional institution.”
Chairman of the Committee and MP for Bunkpurugu, Mr. Bandim Abednego Azumah, also expressed deep concern after inspecting the audiovisuals department of the archives revealing “I was particularly saddened when I entered into the audiovisuals department. I mean, that is a very important division of this department that holds the national archives,” he said.
He stressed the need for urgent preservation of audiovisual records to ensure future generations can connect with Ghana’s history.
“We will be exiting at some point, but we will have our children and grandchildren yet unborn who will come after us. What are they going to see about us? To say that, ‘Oh okay, this is how they lived and this is what they left us.’ If we are not leaving those legacies for them, we would have failed as a nation. Why would we leave it?”
The calls from the ISD and MPs are expected to rekindle discussions on resource allocation and modernization of Ghana’s archival and heritage preservation systems.
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Source: Frederick Kofi Thompson-Quartey/ATLFMNEWS
