Ken Agyapong blames Ursula for StarTimes DTT confusion

Enoch Darfah Frimpong Politics Sep - 27 - 2018 , 17:44 2 minutes read

The Chairman of the Communications Committee of Parliament, Mr Ken Agyapong has blamed the Communications Minister, Mrs Ursula Owusu Ekuful for the confusion surrounding the StarTimes Digital Terrestrial Transmission (DTT) deal.

According to Mr Agyapong, the Minister has been cagey with information on the deal and thereby creating the confusion.

For instance, Mr Agyapong said: "we [committee] are left in the dark, ...my members will say that I have a slip lip but all these problems happened because of the Minister, I'll tell you."

"You see, we've decided to call the Minister herself to come and brief us," he said after in a media briefing on Thursday after the Committee on Communications meeting with the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) on the StarTimes DTT deal.

The Communications Commmittee of Parliament had met Thursday morning to listen to concerns raised by GIBA on the Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) and the StarTimes deal.

StarTimes had started Ghana's Digital Terrestrial Television programme but along the line, their contract was canceled because they failed to deliver.

The contract was later given to Ghanaian company K-NET to handle and K-Net has done more than 90 per cent of the job.

K-Net presently needs additional funding to complete the project which is in the first phase.

But the government intends to go back to StarTimes to complete it and GIBA has raised an issue with that.

Briefing the media after Thursday's meeting, Mr Agyapong said the committee has decided that the appropriate approach is to rather invite the Minister for a briefing.

On the meeting the Ministry of Communications was having with GIBA Thursday afternoon, Mr Agyapong said members of the committee who wanted to attend that meeting were at liberty to do so, since the committee has been invited as stakeholders.

More to follow soon...