EDITORIAL: Digital migration must not leave the poor behind

Opinion and Analysis

Mr Albert Kamunde (left), the chairperson of the task force reviewing broadcasting regulations 2010, with ICT secretary Fred Matiang’i during a stakeholders forum at the Intercontinental Hotel in Nairobi on June 17, 2015. PHOTO | SALATON NJAU 

By BUSINESS DAILY

ICT secretary Fred Matiangi cannot simply wish away the fact that 1.3 million poor Kenyan households are in an information blackout in his haste to take credit for what he terms as a successful migration to digital broadcasting.

Instead, Dr Matiangi should be deeply worried about how his fellow Kenyans, some of who surely hail from his rural village, can be helped to acquire the gadgets whose price range of Sh3,300 and above (for free-to-air decoders) is a princely sum for many.

The biggest economy in the world, the United States of America, passed a law in the Congress that approved issuance of vouchers for its citizens who could not afford to acquire the TV signal converters.

The law recognised that information is a basic right entitled to every citizen.

The US boasts of one the highest per capita incomes in the world, but its leaders were visionary enough to appreciate the fact that there are poor people in the society who will always need a helping hand especially when decisions made by the State fundamentally affect their way of life.

Never mind the fact that poverty levels in the US resemble nothing close to the desolation in Kenya, where more than half live below the poverty line spending an average of $1.25 (about Sh122.50) per day.

Nearer home, South Africa has ignored the global digital migration ‘deadline’, as its judicial system adjudicate over cases meant to ensure that the poor are not left in darkness when the analogue TV signals are switched off.

But in his typical dismissive style that has characterized the protracted digital migration process, Dr Matiangi in his Wednesday press conference conveniently decided to ignore the fate of those who cannot afford the set-top boxes, and instead focused on the figure of 2.2 million households that have already acquired the devices.

It is an attitude that has become typical of the extremely wealthy Kenyan public servants who have totally lost touch with the majority poor of the society in which they live.

To them, Sh3,300 is loose change to be spent on a light lunch and they cannot fathom how anyone could not afford the amount.

The equally protracted judicial process instituted by media owners did not help much, as the cry for the public interest was lost in the supremacy war triggered by the sector regulator.

It may not be too late for the government and policy bureaucrats to make amends.

Zero-rating the digital set top boxes for import taxes and VAT could be a good starting step, not ruling out full State subsidies.