Minister of Communications, Ursula Owusu-Ekuful, has indicated that the ministry has granted amnesty to the 131 FM stations who were fined as well as the other 21 stations whose licences were revoked.
Speaking at the 2017 Ghana Journalists Association (GJA) Awards held at the Banquet Hall of the State House on Wednesday, 20 December 2017, Mrs Owusu-Ekuful said the reduced fines are sufficiently punitive enough to make a point and bite a bit and not a slap on the wrist.
She further charged media houses to ensure that they abide by the regulations concerning their operations and pay any required fees as they will not be spared the next time they falter.
“Whether your station was revoked or you were fined.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.
She further explained that “in some of the cases, the fines have been reduced from over GHS 60million to a little under GHS4 million – GHS3.6 million”.
She added that: “All those affected stations, however, have up until the 15th of January to pay those reduced fines in addition to whatever regulatory fees were outstanding”.
She indicated that since the action of the National Communications Authority (NCA) to clamp down on those flouting regulations “over 90 percent of affected stations have sought to comply with the various infractions that they were charged with”.
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