Radio Gold and XYZ Were Not Targeted for Closure – Urslar Owusu

The minister designate for communication and MP for Ablekuma west, Mrs. Urslar Owusu Ekuful has said radio XYZ and radio Gold were among the fifty-one (51) defaulted commercial radio stations but not a target for closure.

Mrs. Urslar made this revelation when she appeared before the appointment committee today Monday 15 February, 2021 for vetting.

She explained to the committee that, an Audit was conducted in March 2017 to assess all FM radio broadcast authorization excluding public FM stations operated by the Ghana Broadcast Cooperation (GBC) to identify stations with expired authorizations and those that have not commence operation within the stipulated period.

The former Communication minister further broke down the report as, One Hundred and Fourty Four (144 FM) which were either operating with an expired authorizations or had failed to commence operation within the stipulated two-year period after the grant of the license.

She said, 51 companies had submitted uncompleted documents for renewal after the expiration of their five-year mandate, Twenty-Six (26) companies applied for renewal even before the audit but no authorization was issued and they were requested to resubmit a complete application since what they submitted were incomplete whilst Eighteen had been issued provisional authorization before the Audit but hadn’t paid the fees in full.

She said, following the recommendation of the Audit report and the decision of the Electronic Communication tribunal in the case of the Ghana Independent Broadcasting Association verses the NCA, the Authority shut down Fifty-One (51) commercial FM stations for failure to submit its complete set of renewal documents prior to expiry of their authorization which includes both Radio XYZ AND RADIO GOLD.

The communication minister designate, Mrs Ekuful did indicated that, radio XYZ and Radio Gold were not targeted as a special station to close them as per been mentioned and that, Fifty-One (51) radio stations were shut down including Five community FM stations failed to submit their complete set of documents were equally closed down during the exercise.

All these clarifications came up when the Hon member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzato Ablakwa who is also a member on appointment committee asked, per report of Media Foundation for West Africa did indicated in their last quarter report on 2018 that, radio XYZ and Radio Gold were purposely targeted to be shut down