Africa-Press – Tanzania. THE government has vowed to reduce radio registration application fees as an attempt to encourage more investors to set up community radios in rural areas, especially along the border posts.
Speaking yesterday in Dodoma during the launch of new TBC’s Radio Jamii- a local radio station for the central zone audience, the Minister of Communication and Information Technology Dr Faustine Ndugulile noted that the move will raise marginalized areas’ radio coverage.
Dr Ndugulile expressed that the existing fees have been discouraging people to invest in community radios, in turn force people living along the borderlines to tune to radios of neigbouring countries, and thus consume irrelevant contents.
“We can’t let this to continue, some of our people depend on the radios tuned of neighboring countries… we need people to invest there,” he pointed out.
The Minister revealed that they reached the decision after a long complaint from the stakeholders, who asked the authority to review the fees. In explanation, he wondered why fees was charged as a flat rate regardless of geographical location of a proprietor or where particular radio is, noting that such situation discourages people to establish radios in rural areas, where business is not as good as in urban areas.
“We are going to review it, and we mainly intend to slash it, the fee for community radios will be reduced to encourage more establishments,” he pledged, adding that the decision will stimulate more investors in the telecommunication sector.
Dr Ndugulile hinted that in collaboration with the Ministry of Information, Culture and Sports his docket has welcoming applications from those willing to establish radio stations in at least 20 districts. However, he tipped that the government has allocated at least 2bn/- to improve radio and mobile communication, focusing more on the remote area including borders town and villages.
“We have already announced tender for bidders, especially mobile operators, to apply. We need the company that will help us to build infrastructure that could help our people to access the mobile communication in remote areas,” he expressed.
In a related development, the minister commended the management of the Universal Communications Service Access Fund (UCSAF) for its effort in bringing telecommunications services to border posts, especially in regions that have been receiving communications from neighbouring countries, including establishing new community radio stations and renovation of the old ones.
On her side, UCSAF Chief Executive Officer, Ms Justina Mashiba, revealed that UCSAF has decided to collaborate with TBC to establish Jamii Radio (93.7 Dodoma) to widen coverage of the national and local content in the central zone.
“Our aim is to ensure that the communities consume local contents, we need our people to have credible source of information especial on those strategic projects implemented by the government,” she said.
Ms Mashiba added that a part from the Jamii Radio in Dodoma, which has been established at relatively 1.71bn/- , the UCSAF will launch another station in Kisaki (Morogoro), besides spending 600m/- to renovate TBC Arusha zone.
Commenting on the new radio, the deputy minister of Information, Culture, Arts and Sports Pauline Gekul called on the media across the country to adhere to broadcasting guidelines, which could help them to produce content that will benefit their audience and not create chaos and panic.
“This station (Jamii Radio); and those already on air are widely trusted. The audience believes whatever presented in the radio is true, that means you (media) should ensure the contents must be in quality that expected with your audience and ethically.” She expressed.
Moreover, the DirectorGeneral, Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation (TBC) Dr Ayoub Rioba thanked the UCSAF management for the project; he added that the station would boost the socio economic of the covered area including all districts of Dodoma, some part of Singida and Iringa region.
