Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, Minister of Information
The Minister of Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has expressed utter dissatisfaction with the State Broadcaster, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), for seeking the intervention of the National Media Commission (NMC) on the blind side of the supervising ministry.
As opposed to copying the ministry a letter sent to the NMC, the sector minister believed the state broadcaster could have engaged the ministry first before heading to the regulator over the directive from the Ministry of Communication for GBC to forgo three of its channels.
“They have not come to me for a discussion that there are job losses or anything of that nature…I work with GBC on a daily basis. On a matter like this, I expect them to come to me and not to whip up the minority sentiments,” he said.
The minister who made the statement on Citi FM in Accra yesterday further disclosed that the ministry has written to the NMC drawing its attention to GBC’s letter.
He indicated that no broadcaster has been asked to shut down as purported by the GBC in its letter to the NMC as the state broadcaster could decide to create more television channels and operate on other transmission such as the Terrestrial 1 (T1) platforms aside from the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) platform.
“If transmission platform has engaged them in a conversation that they would have to create redundancy and rationalize some channels on it, first of all it should not be categorized as a directive to shutdown TV channels because once you do that nobody will listen to the conversation again,” he said.
He, therefore, urged stakeholders to deliberate on the issue and resist attempt to whip up unions, public sentiments against something that according to the minister there has been engagement on.
In a letter dated July 7, GBC informed the NMC under the heading “GBC asked to lose Three of its Six channels of the National DTT platform” that the commission should intervene in saving the broadcaster from the consequence of having to operate with only three channels.
This followed a June 26 letter from the Ministry of Communication giving the state broadcaster a 60-day grace period to decide which of its three channels will be taken off the DTT platform.
By Issah Mohammed