The National Communication Authority (NCA) has approved the licenses of Radio Gold and Radio XYZ for operation.

The two stations are part of some 131 others who have been authorized to operate, subject to conditions spelled out by the NCA board.

The authorization follows the Authority’s Governing Board meeting held on October 11, 2021.

In a statement issued by the NCA, it said the beneficiaries of the new authorization include “new applications from entities whose FM radio stations were closed down after the 2017 FM Audit as well as existing stations which applied for renewal of their expired FM Radio broadcasting authorisations.”

In May 2019, the NCA shut down Radio Gold 90.5 FM and Radio XYZ 93.1 FM, both based in Accra.

Officials of the NCA stormed the premises of the stations with armed security personnel while they were on-air and ordered their immediate closure.

They were then handed letters detailing the reasoning behind the closures while asking them to re-apply for new licenses if they wished to operate as Frequency Modulation (FM) radio stations.

Two years down the line, the Authority says it is ready to grant them broadcasting authorization “subject to the applicants attending a sensitisation workshop on the terms and conditions of FM radio broadcasting authorisations.”

“Provisional authorisations shall be issued to the successful applicants at the end of the workshop and frequencies shall be assigned to the applicants only upon the fulfillment of the conditions of the Provisional Authorisation,” the statement clarified.

The Authority however cautioned stations broadcasting without permits to desist from the act or incur their wrath in pursuance of Section 2(4) of the Electronic Communications Act, 2008, Act 775.

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