The UK's Department for Work and Pensions has been attacked for spending
thousands of pounds of taxpayers' money on promoting its Twitter feed,
after losing £3.5 billion last year to fraud and errors.
As part of the deal, the ministry's @DWP account will appear under the
"who to follow" section on a user's Twitter homepage, the Sun reports.
The news follows revelations that Duncan Smith has spent £74,000 on
media training for Lord Freud, responsible for pushing his controversial
benefits reform programme through the House of Lords, and 236 other DWP
staff since coming to office in 2010.
Recently Simon Barrow, co-director of think tank Ekklesia, blogged: "the
DWP -- bound by civil service standards of honesty, integrity and
impartiality, remember -- appears ever keen to tweet and press release
the coalition line on benefits, while often being too busy to respond to
criticisms or enquiries about the propriety and accuracy of its
claims."
The Taxpayers' Alliance criticised the spending as wasteful.
"The DWP should focus its budget on getting people off benefits, not racking up Twitter followers," said a spokesman.
Earlier this week, a mock Twitter feed lambasting DWP policy was allowed
to re-open, after Twitter closed it down following complaints from the
ministry.
The creators of the account, @UKJobCentrePlus not, argued that by
closing the account down, Twitter was attempting to silence criticism of
the UK government.
Source; IBTIMES
