Alabaster Box leader wins another GJA Award
Samuel Dowuona, the founder and leader of Ghana’s leading acappella quartet, the Alabaster Box, has won yet another Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) Award.
When the GJA role call was made this year, the ‘naabu sounds’ afroppella singer emerged the Best Telecommunications Reporter, on the back of his revealing article entitled “Mobile Phone In Ghana is Big Money”.
In 2008, Sammy won the Best Features Writer (Print) at the GJA honours with his feature article entitled “Felicia – The First Ghanaian Woman Bus Driver in London”.
Sammy, who now works as a Sub-Editor with Multimedia’s Adom FM, was a Senior Reporter at the Ghana News Agency (GNA) when he made his entry into this year’s GJA Awards.
For his award, Sammy gets a Lap-top computer and items from title sponsor, MTN like all other award winners, plus an MTN-sponsored trip to South Africa to participate in the Highway Conference next year.
In an interview, Sammy dedicated the award to his two-year old son, Darrel Nii Nortey Dowuona, saying “since my son was born I have won two awards and he is only two years old – meaning by the time he is three I will win another award.”
Touching on the theme of his award winning article, Sammy says there is no doubt that telecommunications has changed the way of life of Ghanaians in a tremendous way, but what Ghanaians are paying compared to the quality of service they are receiving is of a great concern to him.
He says because most mobile phone users are pre-paid subscribers, they are not able to monitor their phone bills effectively, adding that because of poor quality service people tend to lose cash in the form of credit anytime they face challenges like call drops, speech mutation and others, but they are not able to determine exactly how much they lose.
Sammy says he is even more concerned that the media does not say much about the challenges facing telecom subscribers but the media is quick to do business with telecom operators and give them the platform to promote their money making activities in the name of customer rewards.
“Lately it looks like without the telecom operators the media cannot function because almost every programme on radio, television and even some pages in newspapers and online are sponsored by telecom operators,” he said.
Sammy says he is not against the relationship between the media and telecom operators, but it is important that the operators concentrate on making their money by enabling people communicate effectively and not only by engaging in money-fleecing promotions.
The Alabaster box squad was at the GJA Awards to perform and they joined Sammy on stage to receive the award.
Asked when anything new will come from ‘Da Box’, Sammy says a few challenges delayed the much publicised upcoming album “Level Don’Change”, but now things have been set into motion again to ensure a release before close of this year.