Minister of Information, Mustapha Hamid has accused the Director General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) of being responsible for the public uproar that met an attempt to prosecute defaulters of the TV license.
According to the minister, GBC’s Dr. Kwame Akuffo Anoff-Ntow single-handedly took the decision to request the setting up of courts to prosecute persons who have not paid the annual tax without informing other stakeholders.
“The Attorney-General didn’t know, the National Media Commission [NMC] didn’t know, GBC Board didn’t know, the Ministry of information didn’t know.
“The Director-General of GBC, on his own, writes to the Secretary of Judicial Service and says that he should set up a court. In fact, it is the response of the Judicial Service Secretary to him, saying that in response to your letter...we have set up these courts. That letter was then leaked into the public space. Otherwise, we wouldn’t even know sitting here that any courts have been established,†he revealed on Thursday.
The approval of the establishment of Special TV licence courts by Chief Justice, Sophia Akuffo on the request of Dr Anoff-Ntow to sanction defaulters attracted huge public backlash.
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Dr Anoff-Ntow created more confusion in the public sphere when he stated that the levy is not being charged for owning a television set but for content on GBC.
Mustapha Hamid in response to the issue on current affairs programme, Upfront, on the Joy News channel, Thursday, said the GBC Director-General was hasty in his approach to get Ghanaians to pay the tax and as such did not go through the right phases.
“Even the whole understanding about why people should pay TV licence [is not there]...people are not even sure whether TV license is paid in respect of the sets that people own or in respect of the content that they consume.
“I pointed out to the Director-General that he has not done enough education,that is number one. Number two, he has not put in place proper mechanisms for collecting these levies,†he noted.
He further revealed that the board of GBC and the National Media Commission (NMC) will meet on Friday, January 5, 2018 “to deliberate on the matter and then whatever their response is they will put it out in the public space and people will know.â€
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