Georgetown : Chairperson of the Board of the Guyana National Broadcast Authority (GNBA) Bibi Shaddick took the opportunity before her budget presentation in the National Assembly on Monday to address the ongoing contentious issue of radio broadcast allocations and the call for the revocation of the some licences.
“The Board of the Guyana National Broadcast Authority has never discussed revocation of any licences, is not authorised to revoke any licence by law, except for cause and no such cause has been brought to us,” she said.
Reiterating previous statements, Ms. Shaddick emphasised that this applies to radio, cable and television licences, adding that, “I have never succumbed to bullyism, don’t expect to succumb to bullyism and I will not head a Board which will buckle to those things”.
On the issue of broadcast licences for Linden, Ms. Shaddick reiterated that the Region 10 representatives are yet to re-submit an application required by the new Broadcast Act. She repeated her previous assurance that once this is done, a special meeting of the authority will be convened to speedily process and approve the application. She reiterated that the Authority under the law does not really have any authority to revoke those radio licences that were issued by Former President Jagdeo without basis.
“But the Board of the Guyana National Broadcasting Authority understands that the new law and the new regulations are new and so we are prepared to work with these people and as long as there’s compliance, licences will be issued to that entity for both stations because once a licence has been issued it cannot be revoked except for cause and to this date we haven’t found any cause.”
The GNBA was formed as part of the Broadcasting Act of 2011 to serve as a regulatory body for the sector. Six of its seven members were nominated by the President and one by the Opposition Leader.
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