BA RESIDENTS ASSURED OF UNINTERRUPTED TV RECEPTION (Page 24)

Story: Samuel Duodu, Sunyani

THE Brong Ahafo Regional Director of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), Mr Victor Appeah, and the Public Relations Officer of the Sunyani Office of the Volta River Authority (VRA), Mr Alaasan Abaaba, have given the assurance that they have put the necessary measures in place to enable people in the region to watch the Ghana 2008 Africa Cup of Nations matches uninterrupted.
According to Mr Appeah, one of the two TV transmitters, which were inaugurated some 15 years ago, broke down in the first week of this month, but had since been repaired and was in good working condition.
“The engineers who worked on the transmitter left Sunyani last Friday, and all things being equal, the people of this region will watch the whole tournament,” he stressed.
Mr Appeah, who made this known to the Daily Graphic in Sunyani, stated that a team had also been put in place to tour the country to repair any TV transmitter that might go off during the tournament.
He denied that the Sunyani transmitter, which broke down on January 2, this year, was due to the technical inefficiency of the management and staff of the Brong Ahafo Regional GBC office, but said the equipment was rather old and it was difficult in securing its parts.
For his part, Mr Abaaba said VRA, as a utility provider, had carried out its maintenance work in all its areas of operations to ensure that the people in the region enjoyed uninterrupted power supply throughout the tournament.
He told the Daily Graphic that a standby team had been put in place to move in to restore power immediately, in case of any power outage in any part of the region.
Mr Abaaba explained that most of the outages experienced in the region were caused by human activities.
According to him, some people used tall bamboo TV poles that usually interfered with their power lines, while branches of cocoa, teak and plantain plantation under VRA high tension poles sometimes also tripped the lines.
Mr Abaaba also attributed some of the power outages to illegal connections.
He, therefore, appealed to people whose plantations were under the VRA lines to call on the company to clear the way to prevent such human trips.
At a recently held press soiree in Sunyani, the Regional Minister, Mr Ignatius Baffour-Awuah, made an appeal to the two state organisations, GBC and VRA, to ensure that the people in the region had a feel of the Ghana 2008 tournament.