Founder of ABC Limited, owners of` Asaase Radio, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko has denied claims by some members of the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) that government is freeing up space on the DTT 1 to create room for owners of Asaase Radio to have an opportunity to operate a television station.
The Ministry of Communications in a letter to GBC and Crystal TV asked that they reduce their channels on the DTT from six (6) and three (3) respectively in order to create space on the Digital terrestrial television.
Questions have been raised on the mandate of the Minister to issue such directives.
A fierce proponent of this against this move, has been the Member of Parliament for Ningo Prampram who believes it’s a move by the government to create space for cronies like owners of Asaase Radio to start a television station.
“Listening to the Minister and the intent that runs behind her comments, if the intent is not to take these channels and hand them over to whatever pressing application is making her hot at this point in time, she would not have made the point that she’s got a backlog of applications for DTT slots going back to 2017. The truth of the matter is that the applications for DTT slots go way back beyond 2017, why the Minister is restricting herself to those that came in 2017, I don’t know.
“You cannot run away from the fact that as far back as 2013, the NCA had made it clear that there was no space for new frequency allocation in Greater Accra, yet in 2020, the Minister for Communications could find frequency allocation that will interfere with Joy operations and give it to Asaase. So if today we are seeing the strong-arming of GBC and Crystal TV to take their TV frequencies would it be wrong for me to ask if the Asaase empire also wants to have an Asaase TV? She can choose to tell us whether or not Asaase has made an application for TV or not,” he stated in an interview.
But speaking To Accra-based Citi TV in an interview monitored by MyNews, Gabby Asare Otchere-Darko who owns Asaase Radio said that was the first time he was hearing that some members of the opposition NDC claim space were being created on the DTT to provide a slot for Asaase Radio to start a Television station.
He said: “I’m hearing for the first time, I don’t understand this. First of all, let me put it on record that ABC Limited which owns Asaase Radio has not put in any application for what we call DTT which you call Digital Terrestrial Transmission. That is what the issue is and there is no such application so I’m not so sure…I think the last bit of the lot were given away in the first quarter of 2017 and I think Citi was part of that so I’m not too sure where this is coming from”.
“Let me repeat, we’ve not applied for a DTT License. On matters like this I don’t think Sam George should be the one that we should rely on because of course if he had checked he would have seen that there no such application.”
Source: MyNewsGh.com
