The Akufo-Addo – Bawumia adhesion to make Ghana a more digitalized country is in progress for better satisfaction with the introduction of national roaming service in the telecom sector by the end of this year.

This was made known by the minister of Communications and Digitalisation, Hon. Ursula Owusu-Ekuful.

Speaking in an interview on The Asaase Breakfast Show, Madam Ursula Owusu noted that, the move would boost voice communication in the country by making connectivity accessible to all.

According to her, the move means that, in areas where one’s network is non-existent or very poor, a subscriber’s SIM will automatically connect to another telecom network which has good connectivity adding that, all the telecom providers have so far pledged their support for the initiative.

“Another thing that we are doing is to mandate national roaming, so whether there is a service from your service provider in a particular part of the country or not, just like we roam on other networks.

“You can roam on other networks when you travel to a region, a district, or where your network provider is not present for a small fee, which you won’t feel, because it will be part of the charges that you pay to your network provider. But there will be a bilateral arrangement between all the players to ensure that the national roaming happens and we are going to do that by the end of this year. I have already told them we are doing this” she revealed.

Digital Transformation

The Minister touching on the country’s achievement with the digital transformation agenda said the government of Ghana has done enough and still looking forward to doing more.

According to her, the addition of digitalization to her Ministry would see to the full implementation of all digitalized agendas in the public and private sector.

“The country’s digital agenda has been fruitful over the past few years and we seek to do more. Now that digitalization has been added to my Ministry – that clearly gives the understanding of more digitalized work added to the already duties. The digital skills training would also be done to equip the citizens more as well as help us to reduce the duplications of waste of money and resources which happens with government duties seeking to acquire all over again.”

Press Freedom

In another development, the Ablekuma West lawmaker responding to critics who describes the Akufo-Addo administration as not having press freedom to his heart said claims of an apparent return of the culture of silence in Ghana must be discredited and dismissed.

“I don’t want to believe our senior Sam Jonah is indicating government is stopping journalists and others from expressing their views, either by force of cohesion or fear or intimidation – government has not stopped them but rather individuals themselves have decided to be mute over their own reason(s) — maybe it can be they are satisfied. Today, there are multiplexity of channels where people express themselves. At first, it was only through radio, TV, and newspapers – today everybody with a device is a journalist.”

She added, “Who has stopped them? Maybe we don’t understand the word culture of silence that well. Is it the culture of silence that we knew, the one that no one can speak? So to me, the use of culture of silence by him[Sam Jonah], I don’t understand. Is like comparing mangos with oranges, is it the same thing we were enjoying during the military rule? Who has sanction or punish anybody from expressing their opinions? Who has been penalized for expressing their views under this government? So if someone says Nana Addo is attacking press freedom, it means they do not know the man.”