It's Not The Role of Government To Finance Media - CS Owalo

ICT Cabinet Secretary Eliud Owalo has disclosed that the government will massively cut its spending on media houses. 

Speaking on JKL on Wednesday, July 5, CS Owalo affirmed that the Government cannot be the single source of revenue for the media. 

"It is not the role of the government to finance the media. It so happens that the government has been advertising in the media but the government cannot be the single source of revenue for the media. Some of the plans I have as the CS responsible for that functional mandate, I don’t see why the government should continue spending the amounts of money that it has been spending on advertisement revenue," the ICT CS stated. 

Mr. Owalo noted that media should think out of the box in the digital age and reorient itself strategically. 

"I won't continue spending that large amount of money on advertising revenue in this digital age. It doesn't make sense to me and once I get approval from relevant levels I will definitely introduce certain changes," Owalo said. 

The ICT CS mentioned that he would re-engineer the operations of Government Advertising Agency (GAA) with regard to the spending. 

"I’m going to re-engineer the operations of the Government Advertising Agency (GAA) more so with respect to the amount of money we spend on advertisement revenue. The reach of the media houses cannot match the reach of the Postal Corporation of Kenya. 

"We spend about Ksh.60M in the private sector to print My Gov. I can use a gov't entity to print My Gov at Ksh.3M. Gov’t has been losing that money, and nobody has cared to take corrective action; I’m coming in to introduce change for the good of Kenyans," Owalo stated.