By Annet Nakanwagi,
KAMPALA
The opposition Uganda People’s Congress has asked the government to support private media to enable them breakthrough in the industry.
The call comes at a time when the private media under their umbrella National Broadcasters Association (NAB) is boycotting covering government activities over the presidential directive that gives UBC and Vision Group total monopoly to all government adverts.
During a media engagement on Wednesday, Muzeyi Faizo the party’s Head of Media and Communications observed that the media make money from advertisements and that the government is the biggest reliable advertiser with a huge volume of adverts. He asserts that this denying government adverts to privately owned media may directly end up crippling or killing off the industry that is struggling to recover from the devastating impacts of COVID-19.
According to Muzeyi, private media has evolved and practically covering the whole country and a lot of investments have been put in establishing media houses and offering endless employment opportunities to the journalists who are now in gainful employment.
He argues that the private media deserve government adverts to keep them afloat in business which guards them against business closure due to failures to renew licenses and pay taxes as well as avoiding the escalation of unemployment levels that is becoming an impediment to the anticipated prosperity for all. He says that government adverts cut across the country and to be a monopoly of UBC and Vision Group of companies, cannot effectively cover the entire market.
“A case in point is the experience of the out-break of covid-19 pandemic which called for concerted efforts of both public and private media to keep our citizenry up-to-date with covid-19 guidelines, access to information and indeed, they did a commendable job that saved many lives of our people,” Faizo noted.
UPC suggests that the government enters into constructive engagements and dialogue that seeks an amicable solution with focus on a percentage share of government adverts between public and private media.
