Tanzania: Nape asks MPs to review Bunge studio regulations
What you need to know:
Nape Nnauye has asked his fellow parliamentarians to formulate proper regulations that will foresee the operations of ‘Bunge studio’.
Dar es Salaam. Mtama constituency legislator Nape Nnauye has asked his fellow parliamentarians to formulate proper regulations that will guide operations of the Bunge studio.
On 19 April, 2016, live coverage of parliamentary sessions was halted.
The move, announced by the then Information Minister Nape Nnauye in January (2016), triggered protests from the opposition party and journalists' groups, who said they viewed the decision to stop live broadcasts of parliamentary debates as tantamount to censorship.
According to the former minister, who was quoted on Monday, February 18, 2019 during a live interview in a local television, his decision was not to deny the public access to parliamentary debates.
“Live broadcast of parliamentary proceedings by the state broadcaster, Tanzania Broadcasting Corporation (TBC) cost about Sh4 billion a year and the law-makers were not paying for the expenses incurred by TBC. My intention was to protect the public broadcaster from collapsing,” he said.
He said the parliament’s move to establish ‘Bunge studio’ over-weighed his attention and stopped live broadcast by all media outlets whom were required to get sessions from the new channel.
The former minister also said that the establishment of Bunge Studio did not follow proper procedures which would guide its operations.
“We failed in the establishment of this studio at the first place. There had no written regulations and policies to guide it, this is why the public feels like it was isolated them from parliamentary proceedings,” he said.
He further says that although some sessions were being broadcast currently including question and answers by TBC, there was a need for regulation and policies to equally feed all people with parliamentary information.
“We were supposed to come up with proper policies and regulations that would guide the operation of this studio. This is where we messed up and the move never involved all stakeholders to formulate proper regulatory,” he said.
Mr Nnauye urged his fellow MP’s to come up with proper regulations on how Bunge sessions should be broadcast.
