Supreme Court live telecast - who is paying for it?

General Secretary of the People's National Convention (PNC), Bernard Mornah, has asked who will be responsible for the payment of the airtime GTV is using to telecast live proceedings at the Supreme Court.

He claims as at the time the decision was made by the Chief Justice, GTV may have budgeted and planned their activities already; including advertisement from various companies.

One can recall that GTV was given the nod to telecast live the election petition proceedings at the Supreme Court.

In view of this, Bernard Mornah alludes that since the proceedings takes more than an hour, advertisement contracted by GTV will not be aired hence; incurring a lot of debt.

Contributing to panel discussions on Radio Gold’s "Alhaji and Alhaji" programme, the PNC General Secretary said: “In making that pronouncement, who will be bearing the cost of that live telecast, because if I am aware, all the institutions of state will have to do budgeting or planning particularly at a time when the budget statement has been submitted.

"Whatever GTV might have planned had to be cut short; they may even run into contract difficulty particularly with some of the companies that have paid for advertisement; simply because this thing was not properly done”.

He said there is the need for government to explain to Ghanaians the resolution that led to the live coverage by GTV especially in terms of payment so that the national television will not incur a lot of debt, leading to privatisation.

“Are we going to leave the cost to the judiciary to bear or to which organ of government to bear; and we will come back and say that we should privatise it because of its high indebtedness,” he questioned.