By ENNIO KUBLE
The Censorship Office has been under funded over the last five years resulting in the enforcement body not having the resources and capacity to perform effectively, the chief censor said yesterday.
Chief censor Steven Mala, in an interview, said even the Classification of Publication (Censorship) Act 1989 was outdated and not applicable to censored activities produced by people with aid of the latest technology.
Mr Mala said the Censorship Office, a statutory body, should be a stand-alone office and not be labelled with administrative issues of the Department of Community Development.
Funding to the office was “peanuts” from a recurrent budget of K342,000 this year, he said.
“It is that I am not doing my job, my hands are tied,” he added.
He said apart from paying the staff, the operational funds would be K80,000, which was insufficient to conduct the required activities.
He said the budget was within that mark for the last five years.
Mr Mala said a K72,000 budget for the Censorship Board’s activities for this year landed him with K30,000.
“If I were to pay stipends to the 12 board members, who are the policy makers, for sitting allowances then there would be no quarterly meetings,” he said.
Mr Mala said lack of funding resulted in the board having one meeting last year, seriously violating the required four sittings.
He said the Censorship Office had raised almost K300,000 each year to the Government but the budget allocation from the Government remained the same each year.
“The budget allocation is more on a declining trend,” he said.
Mr Mala said they requested K150,000 from the National Executive Council for the board’s operations in 2006.
Despite it being approved, nothing has come from the Treasury Department to date.