The Practices and Challenges of West Shewa Zone, Ambo Town Government Public Relations Office

Abstract

The public relations field has dramatically grown to build relationships between an organization and its key publics through effective communication. It serves a wide variety of institutions. In this modern world, the success and failure of an organization also depends on the strategic communication of PRs practitioners. The purpose of this study is to investigate the practice and challenges of west shewa zone, Ambo town government public relations office. All, five (5), workers of Ambo town government PRs office are selected as primarily source of data. In addition, documents (annual report, minutes, broachers, flyers and etc) are used as secondary source of data. Both Primary and secondary sources of data are selected purposively to get reliable and in-depth information on the practice and problems facing the office. The study employed interview, observation and document analysis as tools to gather data. The collected data analyzed qualitatively and the finding of the study revealed that there is a misconstruction about the function of Ambo town government PRs among the workers and the local community. This misunderstanding emerges from the lack professional man power in the office. The workers also have lack of courage and effective communication to create a good relationship between government and the people. Besides, there is mistrust of people on the role of Ambo town government PRs office and workers sometimes are neglected by the people. To overcome these challenges and create an opportunities for future, the office needs reformation through short and long term plans. In the short term plan, different short training should be given for workers to build their capacity and the office should hire totally PRs professionals to change the negative attitude of the key publics and create mutual understanding between government and people in the long term process.

Keywords: Ambo, Communication, Government, Public Relations, Reformation