The Republic of Sierra Leone

MINISTRY OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION

PRESS RELEASE

NO RADIO STATION HAS BEEN BANNED BY GOVERNMENT

One of the pre-election campaign platforms of the APC is the commitment to freedom of the press and creating an enabling environment for all media practitioners to carry out their functions without hindrance. Since the APC assumed office, this policy has been strictly adhered to even in the face of downright false allegations and unwarranted provocation.

The public is therefore informed that contrary to insinuations by the SLPP that their Radio station ‘UNITY’ has been banned, the situation is totally different. In order to put the records straight, Government is obliged to make certain clarifications:

That the SLPP Radio did not go through the right procedures in terms of registration. The Ministry of Information was not legally informed with regards the operations of the radio

That the SLPP Radio went ahead to install an antenna across other antennas at Leicester Peak using private engineers without the knowledge of the Ministry of Information.

The installation of the said antenna caused disruptions in the transmissions of existing radio stations. These radio stations filed official complaints to the Ministry of Information, which caused Government to intervene

Some SLPP executives, including Secretary General J.J. Saffa and former Presidential running-mate Momodu Koroma, have already been in discussion with Ministry of Information officials as late as yesterday Friday 9^th May 2008 about going through the official acceptable process

Let it therefore be known that if the SLPP Radio goes through the proper channels for its broadcast, then Government has no power to stop it or ban such broadcasts.

It should however be emphasized that this Government is a great respecter of the law and would not allow a group of people or any political party to flout the laid-down rules of this country or infringe on the rights of other people or institutions without intervening to correct the anomaly.

10^th May 2008