Govt to collect $11m in radio frequency fees

JAKARTA (JP): The government will collect some Rp 24 billion (US$11 million) from private radio stations throughout the country for fees of frequency utilization rights (BHP), an official said.

"We keep on collecting fees from the stations, even though most of the radio broadcasters, especially those in Jakarta, are violating allowable power transmitter rules," the director of frequency of the Ministry of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications, Saksono, told reporters here yesterday.

He said that actually the government allows the use of a power transmitter with a capacity of only 100 watts for every radio broadcasting in the frequency modulation (FM) wave and 400 watts for those in the amplitude modulation (AM) wave.

"However, several radio stations in Jakarta violate the rules and use far more powerful transmitters," he said.

There are currently more than 50 radio stations in Jakarta, 38 of them operating in the FM wave. Nationally there are about 560 private radio stations.

The government in 1989 enacted a law on telecommunications which was amended in 1993, which penalizes violators with one year of imprisonment or a fine of Rp 10 million for negligence, four years of imprisonment or a fine of Rp 40 million for disturbance, and seven years of imprisonment for causing death.

Since 1992 the government has also ruled that every FM station in Jakarta should pay annual fees of Rp 2.5 million for frequency utilization rights and AM stations Rp 1.5 million. Fees for stations in other provinces vary from Rp 400,000 to Rp 1 million per annum.

Saksono also said that by March 1993, his office collected a total of Rp 14.43 billion in fees, which increased to Rp 23.54 billion by March this year.

He also said that from January to August this year his office has registered only 124,913 licensed radio terminals or only 30 percent of the total of such devices used in the country. (icn)