As you are all aware today is Independence Day and I wish you all a Happy Independence Day. I will not respond to all the questions and comments particularly to ones made by those I perceived to be using false and fake names. I will continue my debates/discussions with real people with real names. Some of the questions and comments are either too silly or childish to debate on and I will ignore those.
Some members have their minds set about what they fill and how they view certain issues and matters and no logic or fact would make them change. There are also those who hate President Jammeh so much that it clouds their judgements. I will not also respond to those who are just piggy-banking on ideas and comments of others, they never offer original ideas or comments.
Bamba Laye Jallow, the training programme is having a positive effect on the quality of service delivery of GRTS. The engineering unit is doing a much better job compared to two years ago. They are maintaining the equipment better and our own engineers are doing most the repairs in house. However, there is still some room for improvement.
On the programme side, the programme quality has been improving remarkable and those who have the opportunity to watch GRTS from start, would agree with me.
The Marketing Unit is more proactive now. Before they would just in their offices and wait for clients to come to them to advertise, but now they are going out every day approaching potential clients and convincing them to advertise both on radio and television. When I first took over in 1997, the annual income was about D500, 000. Now things are getting better. Last year we made D4.2 million and this year our target is D6 million. In a few years time we would be making more than D10 million per annum easily. Apart from training the marketing staff and also improving on the programme quality, we are working on extending our coverage so that we could easily cover Dakar. This will enable us to penetrate the Senegalese market and attract a lot more advertisers from Senegal. GRTS Television is presently covering some part of Dakar and but the radio is covering the whole sub-region from Liberia to as far north as Northern Nigeria (and Las Palmas at Night).
GRTS management is concerned with the turn over of personnel and this phenomenon is not only affecting GRTS, but all companies in The Gambia in particular and Africa in general. This has nothing to do with Government policy or our policies. The staff at GRTS is very young, the majority left school few years ago with good “O” and “A” Level results and some took up appointment because they did not have the opportunity to go for further education. Most of them would leave when they have the opportunity from other sources to further their education. Others would leave because they cannot wait for GRTS to send them for long-term training, because it could take a few years. This is he reality here. I do not know of any body who left GRTS because of “direct or indirect policies/exertions from the executive arm of government”. A few (about two) left after being trained by GRTS to take jobs with higher salary in the private sector.
The building of a television station was the most important decision made by the President and the AFPRC government. The television is contributing positively to the lives of Gambians. We will talk on this next, along with the balance or unbalance reporting on GRTS.
HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY.
PEACE
Tombong
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