21 Mar 2018

Kgatleng District councillors have decried lack of fair coverage by the Department of Broadcasting Services (DBS) in the district.

Responding to a presentation by the director of DBS Ms Keitirele Mathapi during the ongoing full council session on Tuesday, councillors said they were not happy on coverage of events by the department.

Councillor Gomolemo Gouwe said they had observed that reporters from DBS will only cover what they were sent to do while other important issues will not be news to them.

He complained that coverage was dominated by the presidency.

Councillor David Motlhatlhedi said state media should attend to critical issues that affected the public but in most cases they were nowhere to be found.

He asked the state broadcaster to work on the quality of pictures and also enhance advertising by engaging more private companies.

Councillor Seoke Seoke said he was worried that Botswana Television only covered council chairperson’s speech and disappear while other councils in the country were given a broad coverage where even debates by councillors were well covered.

He further said there is poor signal reception in Mochudi east constituency in the river villages and asked DBS to attend to the matter.

Councillor Tshepo Kwapa differed with his fellow councillors arguing that Botswana Television had seen a transformation since its inception and a lot had been achieved so far.

He said councillors should understand that broadcasting services was a state media which got its mandate from government and should do as they were told.

Councillor Wellington Senwelo said he thanked broadcasting services for doing a good job and hailed them for information dissemination on government programmes and policies.

In her presentation, DBS director Ms Mathapi said DBS was a government department that focused on information dissemination and interpretation of government policies to the public.

She said DBSwas made up of radio, television and engineering divisions and they were currently on trial with Btv 2 after the launch of the youth channel recently.

Ms Mathapi said they were operating in nine district offices and Kgatleng was being covered from Molepolole by radio while for Btv coverage they came from headquarters in Gaborone.

She further said they were hoping to extend their coverage to three more districts which would improve their footprint.

However, Ms Mathapi said her department was faced with a number of challenges among them shortage of manpower compounded by freezing of recruitment by government.

She said they currently depended on freelancers who had been helpful to them when it came to news coverage.

The director further said they had shortage of equipment more so that it was expensive to run digital media and they did not have enough cameras to cover all the 57 constituencies.

Ms Mathapi also told councillors that they had lack of support from stakeholders who were not forth coming with information when reporters seek interviews with them.

In responding to some of the issues raised by councillors, Ms Mathapi said issues raised by councillors were valuable in the sense that they would help them know what Batswana needed.

She said councillors should understand that the President and his deputy were always given precedence when it came to coverage of events where ever they were.

She also said Botswana Television as a national news channel would always air news that united the nation and would not air matters that brought disorder and disunity.

Ms Mathapi said Btv would be turning 18 years this year and the equipment which they used was old and they were looking at replacing them.

She said because of the old equipment, they experienced freezing at times but that would be sorted once they had been replaced.

She concluded that her department provided 95 per cent coverage of the whole country but they did have what was called blind spot which would be attended to through the gap filling project so that all Batswana could listen to radio and television. ENDS