All broadcasters must confirm with Broadcast Act – Dr. Luncheon

Apr 20, 2013 News

“It is not an easy task,” said Cabinet Secretary, Dr Roger Luncheon, of the mandate of the Broadcast Authority to ensure that all licensees who fell under the former Post and Telegraph Act to now conform to the Broadcast Act of 2011.
Dr. Luncheon’s comments were prompted by a question posed to him during his most recent post cabinet press briefing about the possibility of a foreigner owning 50 per cent or more shares in the local broadcast sector.
In offering a detailed explanation, the Cabinet Secretary noted that in 2011 after the enactment of the Broadcast Act, the government had moved to get the Act operationalised thereby allowing for the Post and Telegraph Act, which he described as a colonial piece of legislation, to be replaced.
There was however a delay in operationalising the Act, which, according to him, was no fault of the Government.
“I think that you can’t help but be aware of the difficulties that the administration faced in moving from its intentions to reality that indeed as late as August of 2012, virtually a year later, the administration was unable, I might even go as far as to say, prevented from operationalising the Broadcast Act.”
He explained that the governing board on which a member of the opposition sits was in fact never constituted until Sherwood Lowe was appointed by the leader of the opposition during the third quarter of 2012.
He said that ahead of this development the extant applicable law under which all broadcasting was being done in Guyana was the colonial Post and Telegraph Act.
Moreover, noted that the award of the radio licences that took place in 2011 were done under the auspices of the Post and Telegraph Act and not that of the Broadcast Act whose commencement order was issued in September 2012.
“What will happen today is that for any broadcaster to be licensed to broadcast…they would have to convert their entire operations and put it in accordance with the Act.”
As a result, Dr Luncheon said that all broadcasters who would have been licensed under the former Act are now required to bring their operations in accordance with the Broadcast Act.
This, according to the Cabinet Secretary, is not only a requisite for new broadcasters but also “those who were given radio licences, those who were given television licences in the 1990s and 1980s…all of them, every single one of them, will have to bring their operations in accordance with the Broadcast Act provision of today.”

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All broadcasters must confirm with Broadcast Act – Dr. Luncheon

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All broadcasters must confirm with Broadcast Act – Dr. Luncheon

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