General News of Thursday, 6 July 2017

Source: starrfmonline.com

NCA to sanction 100 radio stations – Ursula Owusu

Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu

The Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu has stated that the National Communication Authority (NCA) is being empowered by government to sanction radio stations in the country who breach the Authority’s frequency regulation.

Speaking Thursday at the inauguration of the 9-member governing board for the NCA, she said affected radio stations will suffer revocations of their frequencies, imposition of fines among other depending on the severity of their offences.

According to her, such a measure will sanitise the airwaves.

“…Sanctions will be applied to those who flouted the license condition, they are over a hundred and sanctions range from suspension to revocation of the authorization and some would have fines imposed upon them,” she said.

She added, “they range from either expiry of the authorization, incomplete application for extension or renewal, nonpayment of fees, transfer of licenses to other agencies without prior approval of the NCA and a range of other issues.”

She further noted, “We need to have some sanity in this space and so those are the measures we are putting in place to ensure that everybody who signed up to operate a radio station in this country will abide by their own license conditions that they’ve signed up to.”