Barbara Oteng-Gyasi, Tourism Minister
The Ghana Tourism Authority (GTA) has lauded the government for easing some of the Covid-19 restrictions placed on the tourism and hospitality industry as part of measures to check the spread of the pandemic.
The Central Regional Director of the GTA, Mr Kwame Gyasi, said the intervention was key to reviving the tourism and hospitality industry to enable it to create employment, generate revenue and sustain economic growth.
He was speaking during a tree planting exercise as part of activities to commemorate this year’s Emancipation Day celebration in Cape Coast on Tuesday.
Emancipation Day Celebration is an international event observed on August 1, every year to celebrate the resistance and liberation of Africans in the Diaspora against enslavement and human rights violation.
The national celebration will be on the theme: “Our Heritage, Our Strength,” with a sub-theme: “Leveraging Our Resilience; Black Lives Matter”.
According to Mr Gyasi, the remembrance will focus on rekindling the flame of unity among black people everywhere and highlighting the interconnected nature of their struggles on the African continent and in Europe and the Americas.
The tree planting exercise organized by the GTA in collaboration with the National Sports Authority (NSA) started at 8:00am and about 120 Royal Palm trees were planted around the new Cape Coast Sports Stadium.
On the Emancipation Day, the Regional Director of the GTA said the event was designed to help Africans to reconnect and rededicate themselves to the lessons of history.
He said, “Emancipation Day should remind us once again that the African family has been separated and that the different factions of the family both on the mother continent and in the Diaspora have suffered from this brutal and traumatic separation.”
Activities lined for the Emancipation Day celebrations started on Monday, July 27 in Accra with wreath-laying, virtual panel discussions was held on Tuesday, July 28, and national tree planting exercise would take place today, Thursday, July 30.
According to him, the Emancipation Day celebration, which originated in the Caribbean, has been celebrated since 1834 when chattel slavery was finally abolished in the Caribbean.
The event has been on Ghana’s tourism calendar since1998, making the country the first in Africa to reaffirm its status as the gateway to the homeland of Africans in the Diaspora through its “door of return.”
-GNA