Gordon Opiyo In anticipation of the shutdown of the Uhuru-created Government Advertising Agency ( GAA) Standard Group... Home of KTN, Standard Newspaper and Radio Maisha has announced a major retrenchment.....
This is the folly of the economic policies that favor the rich....
Over the past 7 years, the Ministry of ICT under Joe Mucheru literally killed all media houses... Right from KBC to the 60 TV stations in the Digital platform. All radio stations suffered the same fate...
Instead, money was channeled to 5 Media Houses... About 40 billion..
Instead of using the money to invest well, the Billionaire owners used the money to buy Yatches, Choppers and Properties in Australia, South Africa, France and Switzerland... Leaving very little to the development of the media....
If the GAA didn't exist and media spend remained at the high level of 60 billion per year, the Kenyan Media would have expanded very quickly and created more jobs...
Health TV would be in every County. Youth TV would be huge right now. Njata TV would be employing 500 people.. Lolwe TV would be huge in Nyanza, employing hundreds. My friend Dr Sisinio Muthengi, the founder of School TV.... The first TV to offer a recognized University Degree via TV, would be educating over 30,000 young Kenyans at less than 20k per year for a Degree Course....
But, the greed by a few people destroyed the media.. And in spite of getting billions after shutting down the competition, there was no investment... Pesa wame peleka huko Pandora Island..
Very sad to see Standard Group announcing job loses.. And even sadder to see that there are few places to go after being sacked....
But this will come to an end, after the Mucheru operated GAA is completely removed from the face of the earth....
We will have diversity, and innovation that will lead to the creation of tens of thousands of jobs By Gordon Opiyo