Debtors asked to pay media promptly

DAILY NEWS Reporter in Arusha

DEPUTY Minister of Information, Culture, Art and Sports, Ms Anastazia Wambura, has called upon district councils to ensure that they settle the payments they owe to the government owned media outlets on time.

During her two-day tour of Arusha Region, the Deputy Minister visited the Northern Zone offices of Tanzania Standard Newspapers (TSN) Limited and the Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation (TBC). TSN publishes the ‘Daily News’, ‘Sunday News’, ‘Habari-Leo’ and ‘Spoti Leo’ newspapers.

She wanted to know how the papers fare in the rather competitive market and was impressed to learn from the editorial representative, Mr Marc Nkwame, that the company flagship, ‘Daily News,’ was still a market leader in Arusha Region as far as English Publications are concerned.

The Business representative, Mr Edes Mushi, told the deputy minister that district councils have not been paying their debts accumulated from months of unpaid costs of placing advertisements in the papers.

The deputy minister took note of the issue and promised to handle the matter immediately. For the Public Broadcaster, TBC, the deputy minister wanted to know why the Medium Wave (MW) transmission has stalled, despite the fact that MW was the best medium in reaching out to remote areas including those located beyond the borders.

At the moment, TBC which runs Television and Radio stations seems to concentrate on the popular Frequency Modulation (FM), broadcasting for its Radio Services. FM offers good audio quality but its radio waves don’t reach as far afield as MW.

Mr Christopher Mkama, the Zonal Representative of TBC in Arusha, explained that there were plans to revive Medium Wave transmissions as well as re-establishing the zonal sub-station for emergence or auxiliary broadcasting from Arusha.

Ms Wambura in addition to visiting TSN and TBC offices, also inspected the state broadcaster’s transmission towers located at the Themi Hills location of Njiro, south of the Arusha City.

Earlier, the Deputy Minister visited the Regional Office for the Tanzania Information Services (Maelezo), where the in-charge, Ms Prisca Libaga briefed over the operations of the branch and challenges being faced.