THE government yesterday defended
the decision by the Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation (TBC) to reduce
airtime for live coverage of Bunge sessions -- citing high costs.
“TBC has been spending about 4.2bn/-
each year to foot costs associated with live coverage of the assembly.
“We have thus decided to stop the coverage,” the Minister for
Information, Culture, Arts and Sports, Mr Nape Nnauye, told MPs here.
He said the costs for running the
coverage were unbearable for TBC given the fact that it attracted few
adverts to keep it running profitably.
“It should be understood that 75 per
cent of programmes on TBC are educative while the remaining 25 per cent
are for entertainment; TBC has thus been using its modest revenues from
few adverts to foot the live coverage,” Mr Nnauye explained.
Mr Nnauye said proceedings would be
recorded and aired at night, arguing that few people are able to watch
live coverage during the day due to their commitments.
Soon after the minister’s statement,
Kigoma Urban MP Zitto Kabwe (ACT-Maendeleo) asked the chair to suspend
the debate on the president’s speech and instead discuss the move by the
government to stop live coverage of the assembly’s proceedings.
Mr Zitto argued that it would be unfair
for parliamentarians to debate the president’s inaugural speech without
live coverage by the state broadcaster.
“The people out there who pay taxes to
make TBC running want to see how MPs are debating the speech by
President Magufuli. It is thus unfair to continue without live
coverage,” the MP charged.
He thus argued that the National
Assembly should suspend debating the speech and dwell on the decision by
the government to shelve live coverage of proceedings in the House.
The chairman of the session Mr Andrew
Chenge postponed the session in order to enable the Steering of the
National Assembly to meet and resolve the matter. During evening
session, Mr Chenge read out a decision reached by the Steering
Committee, directing the assembly to continue with its business without
live coverage of TBC.
“The Steering Committee, which met this
afternoon under the Chairmanship of Speaker Job Ndugai, has decided that
we should continue with our business because no privilege of the
parliament has been infringed in absence of live TBC coverage.
Any MP who is not contested by this
decision should forward his/her grievance to the Clerk of the National
Assembly,” Mr Chenge said while reading out the decision.
Shortly afterwards, Mr Tundu Lissu
(Singida East-Chadema) and Opposition Chief Whip sought the guidance of
the chair and argued that it was not right for the Steering Committee to
decide on issues that could be decided by the presiding chair.
Mr Lissu was joined by other MPs from
the opposition camp who stood and interrupted the session. Mr Chenge
then ordered out four Chadema legislators for repeatedly defying his
directives and interrupting when other MPs were called to debate the
inaugural speech by President John Magufuli in November, last year.
The four lawmakers that were initially
given the marching orders were Mr Lissu, Arusha Urban MP, Mr Godbles
Lema, Pauline Gekul (Babati Urban) and Easter Bulaya (Bunda).
He later ordered out all MPs from the
opposition camp after they all stood up in support of their colleagues
forcing the chairperson to postpone the session for about 30 minutes
during which the MPs were escorted out by police officers who were
called in to maintain order.
They were all thrown out of the debating
chamber and the National Assembly premises after which MPs from CCM
continued with the debate
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