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Four speakers at a media session on the TV licence fees at the corporate headquarters of the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL) in Accra, yesterday reached a consensus on the need for increased funding for public service broadcasting.

They also agreed that one of the sources of funding could be from TV licence fees.

This followed trending divisions within some segments of the public as to whether to pay or not pay the licence fees.

The speakers were Dr Charles Wereko-Brobby, the owner of the defunct Radio Eye; Mr Akwasi Agyeman, the President of the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA); Major Albert Don-Chebe (retd), the Director-General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), and Mr George Sarpong, the Executive Secretary of the National Media Commission (NMC).

They were unanimous that payment of the fees was backed by law as contained in the Television (TV) Licensing Act 1966 (NLCD 89) and as such did not provide any option as to whether to pay or not to pay the fees.

However, the speakers disagreed with the sharing formula as postulated by the NMC.

The Television (TV) Licensing Act 1966 (NLCD 89), which established the licence fees and was amended in 1991 under the PNDC Law, states: “Except as otherwise prescribed, a person shall not install or use a television receiving set unless there is in existence in relation to that set a valid television receiving set licence granted by the licensing authority under this act.”

Participants in the forum were also unanimous in their views that there was the need for more consultations and public discussion on the new fees before its implementation.

There was also the suggestion that the implementation date be deferred until more consultations had been done on the proposal.

Since the NMC announced the resumption of the collection of TV licence fees by the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) from Saturday, August 1, 2015, some television users have raised eyebrows in objection to the payment.

According to some of them, the collection of TV licence fees amounted to robbery in broad daylight by the national broadcaster for no work done because it had not served Ghanaians in any peculiar way.

They also claimed that the GBC aired countless advertisements and had various corporate sponsors such that it was now more of a private business than a national asset.

But the speakers were of the opinion that Public Service Broadcasting (PSB) had become indispensable in the process of deepening the country’s democracy and, therefore, required an independent entity – the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) – to be well-resourced to play such a role.

For the GBC to accomplish such a task, the speakers agreed that it had to be weaned off government subvention and control.

The government of Ghana, currently, only pays the salaries of the staff of GBC but its day-to-day operations are funded from its internally generated funds (IGF) which remains very low and inadequate.

One common fear that was expressed by all the speakers was that as long as GBC remained dependent on the government for any form of assistance, it might lend itself to the government’s control and would not be able to play its defined role as per the Constitution.

For that, the Executive Secretary of the NMC, Mr George Sarpong, said “if GBC is to cover the 2016 elections fairly, then we need to start raising funding for them now”.

The Managing Director of the GCGL, Mr Kenneth Ashigbey, in his opening remarks said it was time the media changed its focus from undue politics to critical thinking aimed at finding solutions to national problems.

The media, he said, instead of engaging professionals on matters that affected national development, had tended to seek the views of persons from the two dominant political groups, saying there was the need to go beyond what media operatives thought were the likes of their audience.

He said the strategic direction of the GCGL in initiating the forum for discussion on the TV licence fees was to bring together knowledgeable professionals to brainstorm ways that could move the nation forward.

He decried the pervasive foreign content on TV stations operating in the country and called for an end to the “cultural colonisation”.

The Director of Newspapers of the GCGL, Mr Yaw Boadu-Ayeboafoh, who chaired the function, said the positions that certain segments of society had taken, spearheaded by some media houses, that they would not pay the TV licence fees was offensive.

He said the TV licence fee law had been on the statutes since 1966 and that the impression being created as though it was a new law was quite unfortunate.

“It is not about to pay or not to pay because the law has been passed and until it is amended or revoked, we are bound to pay but until that is done, let’s respect the law,” he said.

A breakdown of the new television licence fees shows that domestic TV users with one set will pay GHC36 yearly, while those with more television sets are required to pay GHC60 every year.

Hotels will have to pay between GHC2 and GHC3 a month for a TV set.
Television dealers such as repairers are required to pay GHC5 a month, while retailers and sales outlets will pay GHC20 a month as TV licence fees.