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

These stations form part of the 131 others who have been authorized to operate subject to some conditions spelt out by the NCA board.

This was the outcome of the Authority’s Governing Board meeting held on October 11, 2021.

In a statement, the Authority indicated that the beneficiaries 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 based in Accra.

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

They were then handed letters detailing the reasoning behind the order while asking them to re-apply for a license 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.”

In a statement dated October 12, the NCA explained that the “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 fulfilment of the conditions of the Provisional Authorisation.”

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.