Parliament in Sierra Leone ended more than 50 years of state-run broadcasting with the passage Friday of a bill turning the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Service (SLBS) into a public service broadcaster.
The new broadcaster, which will be known as the Sierra Leone Broadcasting Corporation (SLBC), will be operational once it receives presidential assent, Information and Communications Minister Ibrahim Ben Kargbo told AFP.
"It will also see the closure of the local United Nations radio with its assets transferred to the new information outlet," he stated.
The UN radio was set up and operated during the civil war that wracked the west African country from 1991 to early in 2002, as part of efforts to end the conflict and work for peace.
Until now, the SLBS had been completely in the hands of the government, but Friday's legislation was passed unanimously.
A director-general for SLBC will be appointed by President Ernest Koroma while the board of directors will be made up of civic and professional bodies, including the Council of Paramount Chiefs, the Inter-religious Council, the Journalists' Association and the Lawyers' Association.
A lawmaker from the main opposition Sierra Leone People's Party (SLPP), Bernadette Lahai, said, "We hope it will be a channel in which all the different political parties would express their viewpoints from time to time on an equitable basis and airtime and not subjected to government or individual influence."
The transformation comes nearly six weeks after the media regulatory watchdog, the Independent Media Commission (IMC), withdrew the broadcast licences of both the ruling party's radio and that of the SLPP, on the grounds that their broadcasts were inimical to peace and security in the west African country.
Source: AFP Global Edition
