‘Scaring’ The Nation

I THINK the Namibian national television, NBC, was established to educate, inform and entertain the nation.

Now, it seems it has also added ‘scaring the nation’ to its objectives. You would know what I mean if you have watched the TV licence warning notices being screened on NBC TV over and over again.For the past number of months, Penduka-NBC has been telling the nation to pay their TV licence fees or have your furniture confiscated and you risk jail as well.Thank God capital punishment is not legal in Namibia! I think NBC has become as serious as other service providers such as Namwater, Nampower, Telecom, MTC, DStv and others which cut you off if you don’t pay.I believe it’s high time for our lawmakers to revise the law regarding the TV licence as it’s against the principles of democracy and free-market economy.I call on political parties to study this issue thoroughly and liberate the poor Namibians from an unnecessary TV licence fee by raising the issue in parliament.It can be a good point for future elections as well.TV is part of media just like radio, cellphones, computers etc.and the public is not clear as to why a licence is needed for TV.Worst of all, the public is not advised how to go about returning the licence if they can’t afford to have it any longer.We understand NBC needs money but imposing your service fee on the public is not the civilised way of generating income.Our government allocates a huge amount of taxpayers’ money for education and NBC should claim its share from there and use it wisely of course.Instead of employing Penduka to collect the TV licence fee, NBC could have used that same money to produce better programmes and attract advertisers.The fact that NBC needed the service of a private company like Penduka to collect fees shows nothing but the NBC’s weakness in discharging its responsibilities and this needs reform.NBC should think a bit and learn from the likes of DSTV and others.In a country where many private radio stations and newspapers survive without licence fees, how come the sole public TV, NBC, resorted to a licence fee for its income.Please make NBC competitive and respect the rights of the people to use its service or not.Peter SwakopmundYou would know what I mean if you have watched the TV licence warning notices being screened on NBC TV over and over again.For the past number of months, Penduka-NBC has been telling the nation to pay their TV licence fees or have your furniture confiscated and you risk jail as well.Thank God capital punishment is not legal in Namibia! I think NBC has become as serious as other service providers such as Namwater, Nampower, Telecom, MTC, DStv and others which cut you off if you don’t pay.I believe it’s high time for our lawmakers to revise the law regarding the TV licence as it’s against the principles of democracy and free-market economy.I call on political parties to study this issue thoroughly and liberate the poor Namibians from an unnecessary TV licence fee by raising the issue in parliament.It can be a good point for future elections as well.TV is part of media just like radio, cellphones, computers etc.and the public is not clear as to why a licence is needed for TV.Worst of all, the public is not advised how to go about returning the licence if they can’t afford to have it any longer.We understand NBC needs money but imposing your service fee on the public is not the civilised way of generating income.Our government allocates a huge amount of taxpayers’ money for education and NBC should claim its share from there and use it wisely of course.Instead of employing Penduka to collect the TV licence fee, NBC could have used that same money to produce better programmes and attract advertisers.The fact that NBC needed the service of a private company like Penduka to collect fees shows nothing but the NBC’s weakness in discharging its responsibilities and this needs reform.NBC should think a bit and learn from the likes of DSTV and others.In a country where many private radio stations and newspapers survive without licence fees, how come the sole public TV, NBC, resorted to a licence fee for its income.Please make NBC competitive and respect the rights of the people to use its service or not.Peter Swakopmund