Mounting Power Costs Force GBC to Shut Down Two Studios

Management of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) says it has been forced to decommission two of its studios due to soaring electricity bills.

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According to the state broadcaster, it currently pays about 100,000 Ghana Cedis weekly to the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) to avoid disconnection, despite migrating part of its operations to solar energy.
Management disclosed that 30 per cent of activities at the Adjankote Transmission Line and 50 per cent of operations at the Takoradi branch are already powered by solar.

During a visit by the Parliamentary Committee on Communication and Information, the Director General of GBC, Prof. Amin Alhassan revealed plans to extend the use of solar energy to its Kanda branch in a bid to cut down costs and sustain operations.

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“So, even this studio, when it became critical, management decided that it should be on only from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. shutdown 4 hours a day. The rest of the day, we don’t want it on. They would sometimes come to plead that they really need to do some work here. We overrule them because of the cost of electricity. The major capital-intensive broadcast equipment has always been provided by the central government, by government. But we’ve seen that in the last 20 years, we’ve seen a response that says that we don’t have the resources. So, it means that we have to intensify our commercial operations to raise the money and buy this equipment. But there’s only a limit we can go with our IGF. This type of equipment cannot be purchased from our IGF because, I mean, that runs into millions of dollars, and it is not within our means. That is because the Japanese came to our aid, and we will need a similar gesture to keep the other studio on, and we don’t have it. We only use it for 4 hours a day, and we shut it off.”

“As we speak now. It’s off till tomorrow at dawn, at 5:30 a.m. They will put it on and heat it, warm it up, and then by 6:00, they start operations, and by 10:0,0 they should shut it down. In the morning, 4 hours. We wouldn’t allow them to come here again because, if you look at it financially, the cost of running this place for another 4 hours, the load on our bill, the electricity bill, is very high.”

“So the only way if you can’t pay your bill, you reduce your consumption, isn’t it? That’s exactly what we are doing.”