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By Mulengera Reporters
UCC Executive Director Nyombi Thembo says time has come for media owners to end their delusion and become honest to themselves. His message delivered on Friday at Imperial Royale Hotel where broadcasting media houses owners from Kampala region converged for their stakeholder engagement meeting with UCC, the regulator, was targeted at those financially-struggling media houses whose owners can’t even get money to pay or facilitate their employees to do basic work.
During the meeting that was attended by security agency chiefs like Gen Felix Kulayigye and Police’s Kituuma Rusoke, Ministers like Milly Babalanda informed the Kin Karisa and Innocent Nahabwe-led broadcasters that many government officials had resorted to declining invitations to come to their platforms to explain and popularize government programs, partly because some of the moderators were over extorting money from them.
Nyombi Thembo said the biggest problem causing such extortion and generally low levels of ethics and professionalism among contemporary Uganda’s media practitioners, has to do with media owners’ refusal or inability to pay them. That in most cases, journalists are paid once in very many months for the lucky ones who get paid at all.
Yet that isn’t all. The pay is even very meagre (as low as Shs150,000 per month) for those who are lucky to be paid at all. Nyombi Thembo said this failure to remunerate staff was largely because many of the media businesses are loss-making and not making any money at all. This makes them unviable as businesses because of inability to break-even after so many years of being in operation.
Nyombi Thembo announced that the government’s way forward is going to be by way of using administrative regulatory levers, which the law places in the hands of the Commission, to demand that small radio stations, which are clearly unviable, accept to be bought off and acquired by bigger media houses which are profitable and in position to remunerate staff better and subsequently enforce high ethical and professional standards.
Different government officials speaking at the Friday meeting implored broadcasting media houses’ owners to either recapitalize their business and demonstrate financial viability to the government or else accept to be bought, acquired and taken over by bigger ones which are financially more viable.
The UCC boss revealed that financial viability will, going forward, be established through looking at a given radio station’s financial statements. Those whose financials reveal viability and growing profitability will be supported and guided to become even stronger using regulatory levers, and those that are revealed to be irredeemable will be recommended for mergers and acquisitions.
Nyombi Thembo advised the concerned media houses’ owners against over exaggerating their financial viability because that detrimentally could have the effect of attracting URA to demand for additional taxes. (For comments on this story, get back to us on 0705579994 [WhatsApp line], 0779411734 & 041 4674611 or email us at mulengeranews@gmail.com).
