A Bulawayo community radio station, Youth Broadcasting (Y-FM) has petitioned the Emakhandeni Luveve lawmaker, Descent Bajila, to lobby on their behalf in Parliament for a broadcasting license.
The community radio initiative has been applying for a broadcasting license for years without success.
Y-FM director Philani Ncube on Wednesday said they were not convinced by the response from government authorities on why their community radio initiative was denied a broadcasting license.
He argued that the number of community radios licensed to date was not proportionate with the population of about 15 million people in the country.
"Officials in the Information ministry once said the licensing depended on the availability of the spectrums, something we totally rejected because we are aware that some other Southern African Development Community countries are licensing a lot of community radios in their countries and the system is smoothly running," Ncube said.
"We are totally surprised to find out that until today nothing has been done about all the things that we mentioned when we petitioned information media and the broadcasting parliamentary portfolio committee in 2022.
“We are appealing to the deputy minister of Information, Media and Broadcasting Services (Omphile Marupi) to urgently look at this issue."
Ncube said a number of community radios could be licensed using available frequencies without interruptions.
- Radio station petitions MP over broadcasting licence
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Y-FM petitioned the government through Parliament sometime in 2020 over the matter.
They questioned the Broadcasting Authority of Zimbabwe (BAZ)’s licensing criteria for radio stations whereby applicants always had to wait for a call for applications by the authority as opposed to them initiating the process.
In response to the petition through a letter dated January 26, then deputy Information minister, Kindness Paradza, said the stakeholders agreed the Broadcasting Services Act should be amended to obligate the BAZ to call for licence applications twice a year subject to availability of spectrum.
Paradza, however, claimed that BAZ was facing technical limitations because of limited national frequencies.
Ncube said they were disappointed that the BAZ had not invited applications from community radio initiatives.
"After carefully studying their response, we realised that frequencies are available and are the ones currently used by the licensed community radios because they are broadcasting to a range of 20 to 25km radius," Ncube said.
"They don't cover the whole country, so the community radios of special interest can also be licensed.
“We are not satisfied with the frequency excuse. We are putting our papers together and sending them back to Parliament. We need clarity on frequency issues."
