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Dakar, Nov 28 (APS) – Deputies, meeting in plenary to vote on the draft budget of the Ministry of Communication, Posts and Digital Telecommunications, pleaded for substantial financial support from the government to the Senegalese News Agency (APS), to help it cope with the difficulties it is going through.
Last September, APS agents observed a strike for several weeks to protest the slowness noted in the execution of the instructions given last January by the Head of State, Macky Sall, for the settlement of problems of the national agency.
The directives of President Sall for an acceleration of the modernization of the oldest agency of French-speaking Africa, created in 1959, had remained a dead letter.
Faced with the worsening of the difficulties, the APS workers had observed a three-week strike, which ended after the announcement by the government of an additional budget of 250 million CFA francs and an endowment of 100. computers, in particular.
But these measures seem to be quite insufficient in the eyes of some members who have taken the niche during the examination of the budget of the Ministry of Communication under the supervision of which the APS is placed.
"The Senegalese press agency is serious, it is important, but we all know that the sum allocated to them is insufficient, while those who work at APS are competent," he said. offended the deputy Mamadou Diop Decroix.
He noted "the insufficiency of the sum paid to the APS". According to him, "the agents had asked for one billion CFA francs, but we gave them a hundred million, which is insufficient".
"We want to kill the Senegalese press agency," he added, calling on the state to "help the APS", "a pluralistic press organ that does important work."
The president of the parliamentary group of the coalition Benno Bokk Yaakaar (BBY, presidential movement), Aymirou Gning, hailed, meanwhile, the work of "the Senegalese Press Agency and the Senegalese Radio and Television (RTS) which cover 24 hours on 24 national and international news ".
He congratulated the journalist Mohamed Tidiane Ndiaye of the APS, winner of the prize for "Best press article", as part of the 2018 edition of the "Grand Prix" of the Atlantic Federation of African Press Agencies (FAAPA), as well as the director of the said agency, Thierno Birahim Fall.
Mohamed Tidiane Ndiaye, head of the regional office of the Senegalese Press Agency in Ziguinchor (south), was rewarded for his report "Casamance: women rebel against poverty", published on 31 August.
"Agents of the Senegalese Press Agency are brave and do a remarkable job in the national media landscape," said MP Adji Bergane Kanouté.
"The criteria for granting support to the press should be reviewed, because young journalists who are sent on the ground do not see the color of this money," she added.
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