Cape Town – Communications Minister Faith Muthambi says her department will require more funding as it prepares to roll out a major communications campaign on digital migration.
The Minister said this during an SABC interview in a Parliamentary feature called ‘View from the House’ in Cape Town, on Wednesday.
Minister Muthambi said this a day after appearing before the Portfolio Committee on Communications where she spoke about the establishment of the new Communications Ministry and the financial challenges that her department was faced with.
“The mandate of government communications has expanded. We are going to digital migration. We will need more funding for us to have more content because digital migration is about increasing more content. That will need a lot of funding.
“Secondly, we have the responsibility to also support and empower community media so it is one of our responsibilities to ensure that for this community media to be empowered, there will need to be a lot of funding to this effect so that people are able to see their stories all over the country,” she said.
While the roll-out of the digital terrestrial television – which simply put means broadcasting is being moved from analogue to a digital broadcasting frequency – has been hit by delays while industry players could not agree on whether or not encryption would be used on set-top boxes, the Minister said further extensive engagements have taken place with all stakeholders.
The Minister said these consultations have been happening over the past two months.
She said government needed to meet next year’s international deadline to effect digital migration, and that this meant her department should be ready to roll out a communications campaign around the project – both logistically and financially.
“We have done extensive consultation with the industry and now ourselves as government and the industry, we are going out to engage on a massive communications strategy to alert members of the public that DTT is coming, it is on the way.
“As a country and the industry, we will determine the way forward.
“What is left now is government will finalise the DTT policy and then roll it out,” she said.
The new Communications Ministry came into being after a proclamation transferred powers and functions to new Ministers as announced by President Jacob Zuma earlier this year after the announcement of the new Cabinet.
The new department replaced the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS) that was officially launched in May 1998.
The Minister said with the formation of the new department, more funding will be needed to carry out the expanded communications mandate.
“As you will recall, when the President established this Ministry on the 25th of May this year, he announced that this department is responsible for the over-arching communications policy. That includes the branding of the country locally and internationally.
“So in essence he was saying the scope of government communications be expanded to include entities like SABC, Brand SA, Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA), Films and Publications Board (FPB) and the Media Development and Diversity Agency (MDDA),” she said. – SAnews.gov.za
