The Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) has reacted to the Minister of Communication, Madam Ursula Owusu’s statement on Digital Terrestrial Television statement on the floor of parliament on Monday, December 11.
In statement signed by the President of GIBA, Mr Cecil Sunkwa-Mills, reads below:
The Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) is a duly constituted legal body of private broadcasting organisations, which includes its TV members currently hosted on Ghana’s National Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) Platform.
The Minister of Communications and Digitalisation, Hon. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful in her delivery on the floor of Parliament, Monday 11th December 2023 submitted that she does not know in which capacity GIBA was acting on behalf of its constituent members with regards to arbitrary fees set and charged by the Minister’s office for the carriage/transmission of broadcasters’ channels on the National DTT platform.
We wish to remind all stakeholders, as an Association of Private Broadcasting Companies, GIBA holds a significant stake in the broadcasting industry in Ghana and has been a part of the digital migration process from its inception in Ghana since 2005 when the decision was taken by Ghana to migrate from analogue broadcasting to Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) broadcasting.
GIBA was part of the signing of the Geneva 2006 (GE06) Agreement which established the digital terrestrial television broadcasting plan in the bands 174 – 230MHz and 470 – 862MHz, and the Association has over the years contributed immensely towards policy roadmap and planning of the structure and form of the migration project from analogue to digital terrestrial television.
It is to be recalled that, before coming into office by the Minister in 2017, there had been a moratorium on payment set for broadcasters who had to migrate from analogue to digital broadcasting and yet were required to continue their analogue TV transmissions as simulcast until Analogue Switch Off (ASO) is announced and outlawed by the Minister, which she has still not done.
To facilitate the setting of fees when the moratorium period ends, the Ministry in 2018 requested broadcasters’ costs of operations on their transmissions network as was the case in the analogue regime, to enable it to make propositions for a tariff model for the cost of transmissions to broadcasters on the national DTT platform, which GIBA submitted at the time.
It is instructive to note that since this exercise in 2018, the Minister has deliberately decided not to meet with GIBA, nor invite them to any stakeholder meeting to continue discussions about the migration process and its policies for whatsoever reason(s) to date.
These are but a few reasons why broadcasters have been awaiting the completion of a fair process
which will lead to the determination of legally approved fees that broadcasters would be effecting as payments for transmissions, for the sustainability of the DTT platform.
At no stage in any of the discussions surrounding Ghana’s digital migration process has GIBA
incited nonpayment of fees for carriage on the national DTT infrastructure.
It has always been known by all broadcasters that carriage is and will be paid for. It is therefore
surprising that GIBA is mentioned in a manner of being a hindrance to the process by the Minister for Communications and Digitalisation.
GIBA has constantly sought to engage with the Minister on all concerns of broadcasters to no avail.
GIBA eventually had to engage with the Parliamentary Select Committee for Communications on the same concerns and all parties at the meeting resolved to engage further on the subject matter.
But in a rather bizarre move, the Minister on the next day after the Select Committee meeting, ordered the issuance of Invoices to broadcasters imposing an arbitrary monthly fee of Ten thousand US Dollars ($10,000) which she claimed to have discounted from $15,000/month for payment by the broadcasters.
This action compelled GIBA to seek redress in the court by seeking an interpretation of the legitimate process of fixing fees in Ghana, especially for a national asset such as the DTT Platform.
The matters are currently before a court of competent jurisdiction and we await the outcome.
We assure our members and industry players that the Association will do everything legally
possible to ensure there is fairness in any fee structure, and that due process is followed.
