The controversy surrounding the one million Media Development Fund has taken another twist with the Executive Director of the Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA), Gerald Ankrah, accusing Information and Media Relations Minister of perjury.

According to him, the comments by Mahama Ayariga, which suggested that GIBA was part of a meeting during which a decision was taken to distribute laptops to media organizations is untrue.

Explaining the delay in the disbursement of the Media Development Fund, a policy initiative announced in the 2012 Budget statement to build the capacity of journalists and media practitioners in Ghana, the Minister told Parliament his ministry was torn between enacting a new law and administering the media fund akin to the GETFund or constitute a team made up of representatives of GIBA, Ghana Journalist Association (GJA) and Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana (PRINPAG) to administer the fund.

He said the latter was adopted and several meetings were held between all the stakeholders to  decide how the fund would be administered.

The Minister told Citi News that the procurement of the laptops was done with the consultation of all stakeholders.

"We procured the laptops and we invited them. Again they came and had discussions as to who should get what. It was an interesting debate," he said, adding there was a bit of a misunderstanding as to how many laptops to be allocated to a particular group.

"All of them made a claim. So i said, i am not into this whole thing so just sit and take a decision as to who gets what and bring me a report detailing how much each group would take," Ayariga said.

But Gerald Ankrah has denied assertions that GIBA was part of any such meeting.

"There was a letter from the Minister of Information and Media Relation for GIBA and some related institutions to send representatives to set up a management committee. This hit a road block when GIBA as well received another letter from the NMC reminding the constituent bodies of the commission of the unconstitutionality of the formation of that management committee of the media development fund.

For that reason that was scuttled. The committee was not formed it did not have a single meeting.

For that reason, if the Minister can go to Parliament and say all sort of things that is not true. Parliament must take the issue up because it is perjury," he told Citi News.