JUDGEMENT DEBT SWALLOWING GBC

Posted on: www.dailyguideghana.com

By William Yaw Owusu

Wednesday July 25, 2018

There is a simmering tension at the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) following what some staff claim to be mounting judgement debts which they said is crippling   activities of the state-owned broadcaster.

A section of the staff are cynically claiming that some of the judgement debts were generated deliberately between some top officers of GBC and other private advertising companies and therefore, called for forensic audit of the company’s accounts.

DAILY GUIDE learnt that a section of the GBC staff is threatening to demonstrate if the Ministry of Information and the National Media Commission do not look into the matter.

Currently, there is a heated debate over how GBC came to owe a private firm called Buy Media a whopping GH¢ 8,450,000.00 through judgment debt as at December 2016.

The consent judgment obtained by Buy Media had been entered into during the time of Major Albert Don-Chebe (rtd), as the Director General of GBC and Mr. Kofi Asante as Board Chairman.

Information available in the 2016 Auditor General’s report shows that, GH¢ 8,450,000.00 debt that GBC agreed to pay to Buy Media through a consent judgement was done without the involvement of the Attorney General’s Department’.

Later when Kwame Akufo Anof-Ntow, currently on leave, took over from Major Don-Chebe and was honouring the court’s order to pay Buy Media, it was allegedly being done by cash not cheque as standard practice required.

There is another issue the staff are concerned about which if not well-handled could disrupt activities of the state broadcaster.

DAILY GUIDE learnt that the Acting Director-General, Augustus Yamson, is currently in the process of making payment to an 11-member Committee put together by Mr. Anof-Ntow to investigate how the Buy Media debt was incurred.

Initially, the committee, all made up of GBC staff, raised a bill of GH¢172,000 as sitting allowance but was later negotiated downwards to GH¢90,000.

However, a section of the GBC staff raised objection by questioning the propriety of the intended payment and subsequently petitioned the current Board of Directors.

They insisted that GBC, currently, is cash-strapped and lacks tools to work with and therefore want the board to consider more pressing financial commitments.