Mr. President, laptops are not our priorities - GIBA Director

Executive Director of Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association GIBA, Mr. Gerard Ankrah has disclosed why the Association did not collect the laptops which were procured from the Media Development Fund by the Ministry of Information.

This was after Mr. Alfred Ogbamey, managing Editor of the defunct Gye Nyame Concord asked why the Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) and PRINPAG (Private Newspaper Publishers Association of Ghana) did not follow in their footsteps.

In an interview on ‘Kokrokoo’ Thursday, Mr. Ankrah said after reading a publication in the newspapers a few months ago; which had the caption ‘Media Receiving Better Ghana Laptops’, he as well as the association decided to “reject any form of laptops or anything coming from the ministry of information…it became a surprise to me…”.

Even though the Ministry of Information have indicated that they held a meeting with the various stakeholders in the media to decide on what to use the money for, Mr Ankrah said ‘that was not what happened.

According to him, they had not taken part in any discussion concerning the media fund.

“The discussion we took part was on how the media was going to be developed; just a brainstorming session. There was no discussion about the use of the media fund. It didn’t t come up at all. When we heard of the fact that GIBA took part in the meeting, we asked them to provide us with the minutes for that meeting where we agreed for the procurement of laptops. The ministry of information must be able to produce the minutes, but I am sure they will not be able to provide anything because it did not happen…” he indicated.

Meanwhile, Mr Ankrah has asked President John Dramani Mahama to look for more pressing issues within media organizations to use the Media Development fund on instead of the laptops.

“Laptops are not our priorities, there are issues pending that have not been attended to by the presidency; particularly on the digital migration thing and these are the pertinent issue that must be addressed by the presidency and not laptops” he stated.