Government proceeding cautiously with issue of new radio licences
HEAD of the Presidential Secretariat (HPS), Dr. Roger Luncheon, told reporters on Wednesday that the Donald Ramotar Administration was proceeding cautiously with the issuance of new radio licences. The licences to which he refers are those approved by past President, Mr Bharrat Jagdeo, and the reason for caution is in order to avoid contentious issues surrounding the Administration’s operation in the future.
Responding at the time to queries from the media as to the slow pace at which government was proceeding to issue the 11 new licences, Dr Luncheon said:
“My understanding is that, because a large number of licences are being issued at the same time — some of them extend with an NCN-type coverage, and others are community-based, like the one in Region Nine — that indeed effort has to be made to ensure that [one] company does not transmit and interfere with the frequency that [another] company is transmitting.”
He further noted that considerable work has to be done to ensure that the basis for “questions, legal challenges, and distortions in the quality of reception” is not created with the awarding of the new licences.
However, he could not say when the process of granting the licences would be completed.
Three of the new awardees would be running national coverage radio stations, while the others would be community-based.
Matthews Ridge Community Council; Little Rock Television Station; Alfro Alphonso and Sons Enterprise; New Guyana Company Limited; National Television Network (NTN); Hits and Jams Entertainment; Wireless Connections; Rudy Grant; Telcor and Cultural Broadcasting Inc.; Linden Wireless Communication Network; and Television Guyana (TVG) Channel 28 are the entities approved for radio licences last year.
Prime Minister Samuel Hinds had presented in the National Assembly a seven-point list on the criteria used to assess applications.
Topping the list was that the licensee had to be a Guyanese citizen, while point #2 stated that the licensee had to be “fit and proper”, with necessitated “background security checks and consideration of current and previous business ventures.”
An applicant for a licence had to be both experienced and capable in broadcasting and communication to receive preferential consideration.
The other criteria dealt with the applicant’s financial standing; the needs of their target communities; the merits of their broadcast/business proposals; and spectrum considerations.

Broadcasting legislation passed in the National Assembly in July makes provision for the creation of a board-run National Broadcasting Authority, which will regulate the sector.
In a case brought by one-time television station owner Anthony Vieira, who had applied for a radio licence in 1993, the Court of Appeal passed a ruling, in October 2009, that the Government’s monopoly of the radio spectrum was unlawful.