The Order Paper of Tuesday 15th June, 2021 indicates the all-important MPs’ “Questions” at item 5.
Question 15 stood in the name of Dr. Abed Bandim, MP for Bunkpurugu.
It states: “To ask the Minister for Communication and Digitalisation when Ghana will fully migrate from analogue to Digital Terrestrial Television (DTT)”.
Ursula Owusu, Minister for Communications and Digitalisation answered inter alia: “The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) granted African countries an extension of the deadline from 2015 to 2020. We wish to inform the House that Ghana achieved full migration from analogue to Digital Terrestrial Television ahead of the international deadline of December 2020. What is outstanding is the analogue switch off phase which will be done when sufficient set top boxes have been procured, and barring the supply chain difficulties imposed by the COVID pandemic, STBs [Set Top Boxes] hope to be received in country by the end of the year.”
Fast forward to Monday, 11th December, 2023 and Abed Bandim referenced that same COVID delay in a bid to pressurize the Minister for specific timelines.
Sadly, Minister Ursula Owusu-Ekuful threw a low blow, telling the Bunkpurugu MP that he has “confusion in his head” and that “there was no COVID in 2019”.
Such was the pressure on Ursula Owusu (or was it confusion in her head?) that she did not realise that her own written submission which she read from the Order Paper of that day just a few minutes earlier had attributed the delay from 2015 to 2020, and to date on COVID.
Please watch the video below for the showdown