OTEC FM grabs GJA’S top Life Achievements Award

The General Manager of Otec FM, Mr. Ebenezer Sarpong Mantey displaying the Award

Kumasi based private radio station, Otec FM, has been awarded with a “Life Achievement Award” at the just ended maiden edition of the Ashanti Regional Ghana Journalist Association (GJA) awards at the Miklin Hotel in Kumasi, Friday 31st of May, 2019.

Held under the theme, “The Media’s Mandate in Fostering Sustainable Environmental Sanitation”, Otec FM, the first private commercial radio station in the Ghana, was awarded for its core values of projecting the goodness of the people.

The award was presented by the Chairman of the National Media Commission and Associate Professor with the Christian Service University College Mr. Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafo, to the General Manager of Otec FM, Ebenezer Sarpong Mantey.

 Accompanied by a citation, it read: “You have news and current affairs programs that employ a great deal of professionalism with the ability to sift out relevant issues that appeal to your target audience who are currently updated on both local and international news as a result of the constant in-house training of your staff.”

Part of the citation also read “your unique program format in Twi dialect has earned you an appreciable level of more than 3.5 million audiences in the market segment, mainly the middle to the upper class and not necessarily the general educated class.”

“In fact, being the premier radio station in Ghana, you can boast of providing labour force for almost all the radio staions in Ghana now as program schedule and names have become a blue print for almost them as well,” the citation concluded.

The award brings to two, the number of awards the station has received in 2019, the first been the “Best Performing Media House” in Ghana, 2018, by the Confederation of Governance Assessment Institute (COGAI).

Otec FM was established by Mr. Oppong Twumasi, deceased, in 1986 at CPC in Kumasi, before relocating to its present place at Asawasi, near the Manhyia Palace roundabout.

Speaking at the awards ceremony, the Chairman of the National Media Commission and Associate Professor with the Christian Service University College Mr. Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafo laid a charge on the state to endeavor to provide persons with disability the resources and opportunities to contribute their quotas to the country.

“I congratulate everybody who won an award, especially my junior brother Ivan and he has demonstrated clearly to us that physical disability is not intellectual inability. That must be a motivation to everyone of us, such that when we see people who are disabled, we will not make a laughing stock of them. Our brains are no better and no less than what is also with them and if we give them the opportunity, they are able to prove their sense of humanity,” Mr. Boadu-Ayeboafo said.

The NMC boss who was also chair of the awards ceremony bemoaned unprofessionalism among journalists and charged journalists to guard the image of the profession as journalism assumes a pivotal role in the governance and development of the country.

In all, 21 journalists from 11 media houses received awards in 24 categories with the best journalist of the region going to Luv FM’s Prince Appiah of the Multi Media Group.

Source: otecfmghana.com/Francis Appiah