ASABA/Nigeria: Information officers in the Delta State Civil Service have been called upon to hone their trade by infusing new ideas, be innovative and proactive in their trade.
The Delta State Commissioner for Information, Mr Patrick Ukah made the call during the maiden edition of the celebration of the Ministry of Information chapel Day held at the Conference Hall of the Ministry in Asaba.
Mr Ukah who stated that an Information Officer should be the most sorted after if he knows his onion tasked them to double their effort as they should be different from other worker as “He is the one to pancake every government efforts.”
He revealed that the Ministry would make every information officer a one-stop public relations officer who could handle issue from all angle, even as he urged them to belong to different communication associations that are related to their work which include the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations, Nigerian Institute of Marketing, Advertising Practitioners among others.
The Chairman of the occasion, Sir Steve Moeteke, a retired Permanent Secretary, who was once at the helm of affairs of NUJ, Information chapel, stated that an Information Officer has the role of interpreting the policies, activities and programmes of government to the people for them to understand.
Sir Moeteke, thanked the executive of NUJ, Information chapel, for organizing the maiden edition of the celebration with the theme, “The Role of Public Relations Officer in the Modern Democracy”, and explained that government depends on information officers to succeed.”
A paper presented at the occasion by the Senior Special Assistant to the Governor on Special Duties, Comrade Kingsley Azu on the theme, “The Role of Public Relations Officer in the Modern Democracy” stated, “As professional communicators, public relations officers are brokers in symbols, those to translate the attitudes, knowledge and concerns of one speech community into alternative and understandable terms for another community.”
He stated that public relations officers play lots of functions in restoring confidence in political process and governance even as he mentioned the functions of a public relations officer to include sufficiently informing various publics about the policies, activities and future plans of government, organization and community leaders.
According to Comrade Azu the functions also include daily mass media auditing to discover areas of negative press and fashioning out public relations initiatives to correct these while strengthening or consolidating on the areas of positive press.
Comrade Azu concluded by calling on the state government to give public relations a priority to enable it take its rightful place in our current democratic government.
