The minister of Information who also doubles as the government spokesperson on Wednesday while meeting parliamentarians enumerated the challenges hindering the good performance of the South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation (SSBC).
Minister Michael Makuei, said that among the challenges SSBC faces is employee obsolescence and the presence of old people who are supposed to have retired and left way for “fresh blood”.
“One of our major problems at the SSBC and Radio is that we have people who have been there since the time of the High Executive Council (1970s) when the Radio and TV were set up. The very founders of those days are still at the SSTV,” he explained. “Most of them (staff) have reached the age of retirement and we collected all their documents and sent them to public service but they were sent back and the public service ministry said that they do not have a budget to retire them and that we should continue paying them. These are the people we are maintaining.”
According to Makuei, SSBC has not been able to employ more competent people because there are no vacancies.
“Vacancies are not created and so we are unable to recruit more competent and efficient fresh blood,” he said.
When asked by Hon. Justine Joseph Marona of Western Equatoria State why SSBC was not doing live coverage of the house’s sessions, Makuei said the broadcaster lacked the money to take on more staff.
“The first question is what are the reasons or what is the difficulty being faced by SSBC that it is not broadcasting the sittings of the parliament. I thought some of the answers are with you here in the parliament,” Makuei charged. “You know the budget that you passed and if you know the budget that you passed, that budget cannot meet the performance of SSBC.”
The minister said insufficient budgeting has affected the station in terms of staff training and he revealed that the TV is currently offline because it has not paid satellite fees.
“The TV is off these days and is not operational because we have not paid for the satellite for the last three years and ARABSAT decided to put us off pending the payment of their debts,” Makuei disclosed. “Secondly, we have the uplink which was bought in 2016 and was supposed to operate for five years. It has come to an end also and we are unable to buy another one.”
He also disclosed that SSBC’s new facility had not been launched due to a lack of funds to train staff on how to operate the new equipment.
Minister Makuei appealed to the lawmakers to pass his ministry’s budget once it is tabled to ensure that all the above challenges are addressed.