GBC reintroduces payment of TV license fee

General News on Wednesday, June 5th, 2019

Source: Graphic.com.gh

2019-06-05

Augustin Yamson, Acting Managing Director of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), announced that it would soon reintroduce the payment of the television license fee to allow the company to focus more on public service broadcasting and to improve the content.

Mr. Yamson said this when officials from the Ghana Association of Journalists (GJA) visited GBC management to congratulate him for attending the launch of the Association's 70th anniversary.

GJA President Affail Monney also urged the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation to support its remediation project as part of efforts to raise awareness of the need for a clean environment.

Context

GBC officially reintroduced the collection of television license fees in 2015 after years of suspension due to non-payments.

While domestic TV users must pay between 36 and 60 pesos each year for one or more televisions installed in the same home each year, repairers and outlets selling a television must pay an annual sum of between 60 and 40 GHc. .

Commercial television operators must pay 36 GHc per year for each television set.

In the last two years, since the reintroduction, GBC has called on Ghanaians to make their payments voluntarily.

In 2017, Chief Justice Sophia Akuffo set up a special television licensing tribunal to hear cases of people refusing to pay mandatory television licenses.

The 11 courts are spread across the country's ten regions and must "sit every Thursday from 4 January 2018 until further notice", a letter from the Judicial Service to the Director General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation. (GCB), said.

According to section 1 (a) of the Television Licenses Act, 1966 (NLCD 89), as amended, "Every person who contravenes a provision of this Act or these Regulations is guilty of an offense and liable to sentenced to a fine or a prison sentence. for a term not exceeding one year. "