Nana Kwasi Gyan-Appenteng.
The National Media Commission (NMC) has raised concerns over the draft document from the Ministry of Communications that proposes the formation of a company to manage Ghana’s Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) platform.
The commission is of the strong view that allowing the yet-to-be formed Central Digital Transformation Company Limited (CDTL) to manage DTT platform is a wrong move and a violation of the Constitution.
According to the commission, the document, if allowed to stand as it is, would violate Article 168 of the 1992 Constitution which vests the appointment of the boards and chief executive officers (CEOs) of state-owned media in the NMC in consultation with the president.
The commission argued that such a mandate was already prescribed by the 1992 Constitution which gave the NMC the constitutional obligation to appoint CEOs and boards of state-owned media.
“The position is confirmed by a 2000 Supreme Court ruling in the case of NMC versus Attorney-General (Writ no.2/96 delivered on January, 26, 2000),” Nana Kwasi Gyan-Appenteng, Chairman of the Commission, said when he addressed the media in Accra.
Nana Gyan-Appenteng said there was the need to adhere to the spirit and letter of the Constitution in order to remove any temptations that the new situation would present to any government.
“By the way of illustration, now that we are all going to transmit through single channels if a bad government seeks to shut down any media entity or attack the television domain, all it needs is to deny access to the single transmitter. An independent company appointed by the NMC makes that more difficult,” he said.
He said the framers of the 1992 Constitution wisely foresaw such situations and scenarios such as the current one and thus created the NMC to prevent a throwback to the pre-1992 media culture in Ghana, adding that the proposal by the Ministry of Communications would send the nation back to that era.
Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, earlier this month announced the constitution of a commercial entity to be incorporated as the Central Digital Transmission Company Limited (CDTCL) to manage the country’s DTT platform.
A statement issued in Accra said the company would have a board to be constituted with representatives from the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), the creative arts industry, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Communications, the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) and the CEO of the CDTCL.
By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri