BULAWAYO-BASED aspiring community radio station, Youth Broadcasting (Y-FM), has vowed to pursue its push for the amendment of the Broadcasting Services Act.
In 2020, Y-FM petitioned the government through Parliament over the matter while appealing with the Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services ministry to amend the Act.However, the ministry through acting secretary Jonathan Gandari revealed that stakeholders had agreed that the Act be amended to obligate the authority to call for licence applications twice a year subject to availability of spectrum.
“In the proposed amendments of the broadcasting services Bill, the relevant section is being amended to allow the authority to call for applications twice a year subject to availability of spectrum. The Broadcasting Amendment Bill is currently before Cabinet Committee on legislation for consideration.
“The petitioners had further raised the issue of overlapping radio stations and licensing does not allow overlaps in radio stations which (former deputy minister Kindness) Paradza subjected it to limited national frequencies.
“Then deputy minister in response to this issue indicated that BAZ (Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe) is facing technical limitations as there are limited national frequencies until digitisation is complete and allocation of available frequencies is being done in phases.”
The letter also indicated that the deputy minister will engage with stakeholders regarding granting of licences to communities of interest. It further noted that the ministry will submit Y-FM’s application for the broadcasting service licence as requested in the petition.
Government also said licensing of more players was being done in stages in terms of planning.“Currently, the minister is capacitating those that were licensed at the moment. Once all these are capacitated and are on air, a frequency audit will be carried out to determine availability.
“Licensing of new players will be considered depending on the outcome of the audit. So, no new players are being licensed at the moment,” the letter read.Parliament, in February last year, told Y-FM director Philani Ncube that the relevant committee had engaged the ministry for an update on the same matter. In an interview yesterday, Ncube said they were not backing down on pushing for the amendment of the Act.
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He, however, expressed disappointment that BAZ had not invited applications for community radio licences covering special interests such as youth, women, farmers etc. “According to our petition to the Parliamentary Portfolio Information and Broadcasting Committee, we collected signatures from the youth at the beginning of 2021, and then the petition was delivered to Parliament in March, 2021,” Ncube said.
“We appeared before the portfolio committee to give oral evidence on 23 June, 2021. A recommendation was made in September 2021. Then from the ministry, there was a response that they want to see these 14 licensed community radios going on air first, of which for now they are on air.”
He, however, said the government had committed to issue licences to new players depending on the availability of frequencies.“After carefully studying their response, we realised that the frequencies are available and are currently being used by the licensed community radios which are broadcasting to a range of 20 to 25km radius,” Ncube said.
“They don't cover the whole country, so the community radios of special interest groups can also be licensed. Also the citizens should know how many community radio players are licensed a year.”
