Government is this year expected to issue community radio
broadcasting licences to 10 private operators as part of its reform agenda to
open the airwaves in the growing industry, with foreign players expected to
share 20 percent of the market. The move, apart from creating a competitive
environment for the broadcasting panorama, is in line with the country’s
constitutional provisions for media variety.
In an interview with StarFM on Wednesday evening, Secretary
for Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Mr Nick Mangwana said his
ministry has budgeted $98 000 to support the initiative.
“In our plan this year, we have already budgeted $98 000,
this money is for community radio stations, which we used to support,” he said.
“Parliament has approved 10 community radio stations that
will be issued this year. The money is there to support this. We are holding
the money and it is losing value”
Mr Mangwana explained why it was necessary to speed up the
alignment of the Broadcasting Services Act with the Constitution.
He said the Act is one of the many pieces of legislation
that is not in sync with the Constitution and there are a lot of things that
needed to be put in place.
“One of the major ones being that since the Act came in
place in 2001 technology has moved on,” he said.
“There are things that have become obsolete. There are
sections that are pretty much irrelevant and with the advent of this new
technology it also means that we broadcast differently from the way we were
broadcasting 18 years ago, when the Act came into place in 2001.”
Mr Mangwana said there was need to modernise the Act, which
among other things to align it with treaties Zimbabwe is signatory to
internationally and regionally.
He said in the Broadcasting Service Amendment Bill,
Government seeks to underscore the distinction between licensing online
platforms and normal broadcasting services, which uses the frequency spectrum.
“When it comes to current interpretation that we have is
that there should be a call out made by the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe
(BAZ), which is a regulator for people to come and apply for licences, any one
of those licences,” he said.
“Our interpretations could be different, but we need it to
be very clear in the incoming Bill that only licences that require the use of the
national resource, which is the frequency spectrum will need to have a public
inquiry and would need the authority to call out for a particular genre.”
Mr Mangwana said Government has no problem when it comes to
issuing licences that have no bearing on the frequency spectrum.
“Those ones should be applied for anytime, any day and they
should be given anytime any day because they do not have any bearing on a
depleting resource,” he said.
“So, if we can issue 3 000, or 10 000 of those licences, by
all means let us do so, they are depriving nobody of anything. So we need that
distinction to be made.”
Still on the issue of call out, Mr Mangwana said there is
need to define how many terms a year that BAZ should call out for people to
come and apply for the frequency spectrum.
“So, we propose that three terms per year at known
frequencies and known time.
“There should be a call out. At the moment we do not have
that. We can actually go for three years if people are abusing their positions
without BAZ calling out for such licences.”
Mr Mangwana said the current Act, provides that licences
for community radio stations should only be granted to corporate bodies, yet
they are called community radio licences.
“In the currency BSA we say that licences should only be
granted to corporate bodies, but we are calling these community radio licences,
how does a community and corporate converge so we want to amend that to say
communities can own these (community radio stations) they don’t have to be
corporates they can be trusts and they should be able to own these and
community radio stations. I think those are the key issues that stands out.”
Cabinet recently approved the repeal of the Access to
Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) and reconstruction of media
laws to align with the Constitution, in a major development for the media
sector. Herald
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