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According to the decision, the Ministry of Economy and Infrastructure (MEI) together with the Ministry of Health and the territorial agencies of social assistance will be responsible for providing the families beneficiary of social aid with converter boxes for digital terrestrial television.
Thus, between March 1 and May 5, 2018, the families that do not have a TV set able to receive the digital signal will have to file an application to the social assistant in their community, saying that they need a converter box.
Social assistance agencies shall submit, in their turn, to the MEI by May 15, 2018 statistics regarding the number of applicants registered to receive converters in each locality.
“The scheme establishes a mechanism for distributing converter boxes to about 72,000 disadvantaged families, meaning about 210,000 persons and allocation of about MDL 50 million. It is necessary to say that the network providing the digital terrestrial signal today offers free access to up to 15 television channels, covering 70% of the territory and 90% of the population. However, the rate of access to this service is limited because the segment of users in rural areas has limited financial capacities,” said Minister of Economy and Infrastructure Chiril Gaburici at the meeting.
We shall remind that previously, according to a Government Decision of May 08, 2015, signed by the then Prime Minister Chiril Gaburici, the Ministry of Finance had to provide in the draft law on the state budget for 2016 for funds amounting to MDL 100 million in order to provide disadvantaged families with converters.
These resources could not be found by the end of 2017, when transition to digital television should have ended, and the deadline of transition was prolonged by the Government until March 01, 2020.
