The Director-General of Ghana Broadcasting, Professor Amin Alhassan says politicians are abusing the national Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT) for their political gains. 

According to him, the two major leading political parties in the country are always taking advantage of the system by giving channels to its members. 

He said this is so because there are no proper policy mechanisms for the national DTT system. 

Speaking on Joy Change-Speakers Series V on Saturday, July 8, Prof. Amin Alhassan complained about the impact of this menace on the taxpayer. 

“When you look at how the constitution talked about the newspaper industry, it said everyone is free to publish and the market will determine who will survive in the newspaper industry but that was not done for the television industry.“ 

“But, I think this same rule should apply to the television industry. So that the market will help to cut out. But as we sit today, when the NDC is in power, their people will come in for channels on the DTT and when the NPP is in power, their people will come in for channels on DTT for virtually free which is leading to crowding on the national DTT,” he said. 

The GBC Director-General thus urged government set up an administrative body to run the system. 

According to him, the body will then have the mandate to recover costs for its operations. 

“We can stop this if we run a proper policy which says that the national DTT channel should be run by an administrative body and that body should be able to recover cost and run it without expecting the taxpayer to fund the DTT,” he added.