General News of Wednesday, 20 December 2017
Source: citifmonline.com
2017-12-20
Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, Minister of Communications
The 131 stations sanctioned by the National Communications Authority (NCA) for breaching Section 13 of the Electronics Communications Act (2009), Act 775 have been granted amnesty.
All fines have been reduced to cover just a one-year period.
The Communications Minister, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, announced this during the 22nd Ghana Journalists Association Awards on Wednesday. She said there was the need for justice to be tampered with mercy.
“Even though we are insisting on the full application of the law, sometimes, we must be a little lenient in our efforts to apply the laws knowing that it may have achieved the purpose for which we started on that exercise.”
Outlining the terms of the amnesty, Mrs. Owusu-Ekufo said: “it applies to all those who were affected by that audit exercise, whether your station license was revoked or you were fined. All the fines have been reduced to one year instead of the various lengths for which those infractions continued.”
Background
The NCA sanctioned 131 stations for various offences in September 2017 and these sanctions ranged from the withdrawal of licenses to the imposition of fines, mostly retrospective, amounting to over GHc 1 billion.
Ninety-seven of the stations picked up fines, with Radio Gold and Atlantis Radio picking up the heftiest fines of GHc 61,330,000 and GHc 60,350,000 respectively.
However, on October 20, in its first act of mercy, the Ministry of Communications and the NCA slashed the fines for the commercial FM Broadcasting stations by 50 percent and granted a waiver to the community radio stations that faced sanctions.
The stations still owing fines were given 30 days, from October 20, to pay the slashed fines, but there is no indication that any payments were made.
Some of the FM stations eventually shut down voluntarily for a period, whereas others were compelled by the NCA to do so.
Legal action
The action from the NCA attracted some legal resistance with Chris Ackumey, a private legal Practitioner and a member of the legal team of the opposition National Democratic Congress suing it over the sanctions.
He wants the court to declare the sanctions illegal, and also compel the NCA to compensate the affected stations which he says were “unlawfully” sanctioned.
The Ghana Independent Broadcasters Association (GIBA) also dragged the NCA before the Electronic Communications Tribunal to compel it to suspend the execution of sanctions it imposed on nine of the 131 stations, and got a ruling in their favour suspending the sanctions against its members.
Break down of sanctioned stations
According to the NCA, eleven (11) radio stations were requested to pay application fees for renewal of Authorisation, and also pay a fine in accordance with the NCA’s gazetted Schedule of Penalties for failure to apply 3 months before the expiry of Authorization within 30 days.
Two (2) radio stations have been asked to submit renewal application within 30 days.
Sixteen (16) radio stations have been asked to submit renewal application, pay application fees, and pay a fine in accordance with the Authority’s gazetted Schedule of Penalties within 30 days.
Twenty?four (24) radio stations have been asked to submit omitted documents and pay a fine in accordance with the Authority’s gazetted Schedule of Penalties within 30 days.
Fifteen (15) radio stations will have their Authorisation processed after payment of fines in accordance with the Authority’s gazetted Schedule of Penalties.
One (1) radio station has been asked to settle its outstanding indebtedness before renewal of Authorization is considered.
Twenty (20) radio stations have been asked to settle their Provisional Authorization (renewal) fees which have been invalidated due to non?payment within sixty days – to pay interest on due amount.
Eight (8) radio stations have been asked to pay a fine in accordance with the NCA’s gazette Schedule of Penalties before the authority conducts inspections as requested by the stations.
34 of the sanctioned stations had their licences revoked because their authorizations had expired and were operating illegally.
