Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, has allayed fears of staff of public broadcasting company, Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), over plans by government to privatise the media house.
According to the Minister, government has no such plans.
The Minister on a working visit to the broadcasting company, urged staff of GBC to ignore such assertions making rounds noting that the staff should rather focus on making the Corporation relevant in the contemporary media landscape.
Mr Oppong Nkrumah made the statements in response to a posed to him by staff of the GBC concerning the rationale for “government’s intention to hand over GBC to private entities to manage,” describing the alleged intention and step as unfair to staff of GBC, especially the long serving ones in the quest to move from analogue to digital.
Highlighting the Corporation’s challenges to the Minister for Information, Professor Amin Alhassan, Director-General of GBC, noted that out of the 23 local languages that the GBC broadcasts, only three were profitable and only two of the eight studios in the Corporation worked effectively.
Adding the GBC requires deliberate government intervention in key areas like procurement of equipment, payment of electricity, as well as funding for their long-service award programme to be more productive.
During an interaction with other staff members of GBC, they petitioned the Minister to work towards ensuring that they got a sustainable funding to operate the Corporation.
Other staff members also called for measures to promote accountability, efficiency and provide proper remuneration for staff of the Corporation.
“A staff can be working for 10 years without promotion on the basis that the Corporation is not getting budget from government. This kills our spirit and deters us from giving off our best,” said one of the staff.
