In yesterday’s legislative meeting of the cabinet which was chaired by Muhammad Sarwar Danish the second VP, the proposed amendments to the regulation of mass media establishment and activities were approved.
This regulation which was adopted in fall 2015, had caused discontent among media owners.
According to the provisions of the regulation, all of media organizations are obliged to renew their license which requires them to pay a certain amount as royalty and another certain amount as guarantee.
The media owners in Kabul and the provinces complained about the size of the amount and said they are not able to pay it.
In the meetings between the representatives of media organizations and journalists’ federation and President Ghani, they asked to amend the regulation. Based on the president’s directive, the regulation was first suspended and the troublesome provisions were then amended.
In the meetings between the federation representatives with the ministries of justice and information and culture, they tried to reduce the aforementioned amount as low as possible.
Mr. Faheem Dashty, the CEO of Afghanistan’s National Journalists Union and a member of the federation’s board of directors, states: “in the proposed amendments, the costs of royalty and bank guarantees were reduced to 90% in some points.”
He adds: “for instance, the royalty for national and local TV stations in original regulation was fixed to 50,000 Afs, whereas in the amendments the amount was reduced to 10,000 for national and 3,000 Afs for local stations.”
In yesterday’s legislative meeting of the cabinet, these proposed amendments were approved and it is supposed to be adopted in a cabinet meeting as soon as possible.
