Maravi

(HERALD) Chamisa’s revised draft ICT Bill rejected

Chamisa’s revised draft ICT Bill rejected
News Editor

Information Communication Technology Minister Nelson Chamisa recently re-submitted a draft ICT Bill for consideration months after a similar document was rejected for its constitutional and structural shortcomings. Insiders say the draft was again referred back to Minister Chamisa for "proper consultations".

According to Government sources, the minister was told to consult Media, Information and Publicity Minister Webster Shamu and his Trans-port, Communication and Infrastructure Development counterpart, Nicholas Goche. The draft seeks to re-order the functions of his and the other two ministries.

A source said: "As with the document presented mid-last year, the current draft seeks to strip ministers Shamu and Goche of their key functions and concentrate them under the ICT Ministry.

"Among other things, the draft wants to repeal the Postal and Telecommunications and Broadcasting Services Acts and amend the Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act.

"No minister can prescribe a law that seeks to alter or repeal laws governed by other ministers without prior consultations and agreement between them."

Minister Chamisa presently does not administer any Act of Parliament, while Minister Shamu has oversight of AIPPA and BSA.

President Mugabe assigned Minister Goche the mandate to administer the Postal and Tele-communications Act.

Speaking from London yesterday evening, Minister Chamisa said: "I don’t know where that is coming from.

"We are in the process of Government-wide consultations and until they are concluded I am not at liberty to divulge what is happening."

He said he had presented a draft to the Council of Ministers and would — after further consultations — submit it to Cabinet for possible adoption.

Minister Chamisa said the thrust of the ICT Bill was to ensure technological convergence because Zimbabwe was "far behind the rest of the world".

"Let’s stop playing politics and focus on the dynamism of technological advancements.

"The President, at the opening of the present Parliament, asked for outstanding Bills to be submitted and the ICT Bill is one of them . . .

"Our main thrust is convergence for cyber security.

"Right now anyone can broadcast with an iPod and there is no co-ordination of these and other communications.

"Convergence is the new reality. It’s about frequency management.

"Frequency spectrums are a national resource and need to be properly managed," he said.

The Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity, Mr George Charamba, agreed, but added: "The global man-agement of the communications sector shows that regulation depends on historical circumstances and value systems.

"The technology in use is not a value in itself but that is what the draft implies.

"The resource must be managed for the promotion and preservation of national values, such as freedom and sovereignty.

"Another is the political value of the Global Political Agreement.

"The Bill flies in the face of the political value of the GPA by seeking to strip some ministries of their functions.

"Each ministry has a function accorded it by the GPA and to seek to renegotiate the GPA by legislative stealth is a predatory instinct that ruins the GPA," he said.

Mr Charamba said the draft sought to bring all laws governing communication under one regulatory body administered by the ICT Ministry, which he said was "absurd".

He said: "I challenge the minister to give Zimbabwe a regulatory authority, which in its make-up will not reconstitute the distinctions between broadcasting, Internet and telecommunications.

"They are all unique sectors with unique sub-sectors from a regulatory point of view.

"The essence of regulation is managing the impact of communications on society.

"What the minister has missed is the social domain of communications and is instead lumping everything under the technical platforms of communications.

"Minister Chamisa is terribly mistaken in thinking the means for communications should be the basis for regulation."

He said they would sit down with ICT Ministry officials and explain to them the various issues affecting communications policy at a global and national level.

Mr Charamba said the crafters of the draft had over-read the issue of convergence.

"There is nothing new in convergence. Time was when broadcasting, radio and television used to converge on telegraphy or wire services.

"This developed over time and split and came back to a point where communications are now largely based on radio links and wires.

"It has always been integrated in an evolutionary way but regulation was under different bodies.

"Convergence need not compel bringing all laws under one statute for one governing body to administer."

He said there was no way telephony could be governed in the same way as radio.

"Find me a person who can instigate anarchy using a single telephone to the same breadth and depth that one person can do using a single television broadcast.

"They are different and are governed differently by different sets of experts," he said.

Labels: ICT, NELSON CHAMISA

posted by MrK @ 8:40 PM