The Minister of Communication, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful has announced that 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.
According to her, all fines have been reduced to cover just a one-year period.
She announced this during the 22nd Ghana Journalists Association Awards on Wednesday indicating that there is 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.”
“it applies to all those who were affected by that audit exercise, whether your station license was revoked or you were fined.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,” she said while outlining the terms of the amnesty.
The National Communications Authority sanctioned 131 stations for various offences in September 2017 and these sanctions included withdrawal of licenses, the imposition of fines 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.
