– —-cable operators to continue
BOTH the Broadcast and Freedom of Information legislation – issues of contention between Government and Opposition – will be introduced, debated and passed in the National Assembly upon the resumption of Parliament, says President Bharrat Jagdeo.
“Freedom of Information Bill and the Broadcast legislation will be passed… will be passed,” stressed President Jagdeo, speaking to reporters at the Guyana International Conference Centre yesterday, shortly before he had a meeting with providers of cable television services.
Broadcast legislation has been a topic for engagement between the Government and the Opposition; and between former Leader of the Opposition Desmond Hoyte and President Jagdeo, an agreement was reached that there will be such legislation and that in the absence of it, a body termed the Advisory Committee on Broadcasting (ACB) will manage the airwaves.
The Broadcast Legislation is expected to have as a spawn the Broadcast Authority, which is meant to replace the ACB and be the legal and regulatory authority for the management and monitoring of all broadcast on the spectrum. Opposition calls for the Broadcast author are buoyed by the complaint that the Government has too much influence on the ACB and that television stations viewed as Opposition-friendly can be unfairly sanctioned.
Various incarnations of draft Broadcast legislation have been around for years but it has been cited by observers that there needs to be the political will to finally pass such legislation. The ACB is restricted in its powers of sanction since it can only make recommendations upon which the Minister of Information will act. An example of this is the sanction that C. N. Sharma received for allowing a broadcast of a programme in which a caller made a threat to the President of Guyana.
Jagdeo said that the Broadcast legislation may cover the operations of the cable services but he could not be definitive on this.
“We’re focused more on broadcast. The cable operators tend to re-broadcast right now. So there may be provisions; but I have not examined how we deal with re-broadcast. You can’t have a rigid monitoring of content as you would with local broadcast because they will have to have a dedicated portion of local content. When you deal with cable operators they just take stuff and re-broadcast,” the President said, adding that there must be careful management of the spectrum.
“I had a meeting with them a couple of years ago and I told them that they were operating illegally and that the absence of regulatory action would not create the legitimate expectation that you would be issued a licence when the sector is regularised,” he said.
Jagdeo said that he is inclined to allow that to continue, because many people in Bartica and in Linden and other outlying areas get that service.
“I had also put some restrictions on them that there is no expansion and that they had to work out proper contracts with the Guyana Power and Light for the use of their posts. I didn’t want a proliferation of their own posts,” he said.
He noted that he wanted to meet the operators again to see how that’s going.
“When I travel around the country some people who live in rural areas say they want access too so maybe I would be a bit more liberal to say [they may continue],” he said.
The President stressed that it is not automatic, that maybe in five or ten years, when the government deals with cable licencing, that these operators will have licences handed to them.