Government not serious on digital migration, says Cama

With less than 10 days before the country switches to digital television broadcasting, Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) has accused government of lacking seriousness and commitment on digital migration.

Cama executive director John Kapito, in an interview on Monday, branded the project as a failure.

“This is a failure but give it a chance,” he said, adding that because government is not serious and committed, the general public is not interested in the whole thing.

Kapito said Malawi is not ready because even government does not understand what it is doing on digital migration.

“They are only doing it for money. When they have it, they travel around the globe to acquire knowledge. But they have failed to conduct awareness campaigns to educate the masses on the switch over,” he said.

Chairperson for Media Institute for Southern Africa (Malawi Chapter), Thom Khanje, said government has done a bad job on civic educating the masses on digital migration.

“I foresee a backlash on government on this, go in the street and ask 10 people what they know about digital migration, you will be lucky if two have the information,” he said.

Khanje said most locals cannot afford to buy the Malawi Digital Broadcasting Network Limited (MDBNL) decoders selling in post offices at K20 000 each.

“This is Malawi, how many people would manage that? There are more people who watch television out there that cannot access the decoders because they are out of reach and there should be a way to subsidise the price. If they had started selling them two years ago, most people would have saved,” he said.

However, MDBNL coordinator Dennis Chirwa said everything is in order for the switch over as the country has enough supply of the decoders.

“Come the day, if they notice that they do not have a television signal, they will rush to buy the top set boxes available in post offices,” he said, stressing that the company has fulfilled all the requirements for the switch over.

“We now have a 55 percent digital signal coverage, which has superseded the existing analogue signal at 47 percent,” he said.

Chirwa refuted claims of poor awareness campaign, saying: “We have done our part in advertising and people have the information.

Countries worldwide are migrating from analogue to digital television broadcasting, following a resolution of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) that member States should migrate from analogue to digital broadcasting by June 17 2015.

It is, therefore, mandatory for all countries including Malawi to migrate to digital terrestrial television (DTT) broadcasting technology.