15 ARRESTED DURING TV LICENCE RAID

MANZINI – The Manzini Central Business District (CBD) was yesterday shaken by the Television Licence Consortium. 

This follows a lengthy period of spreading the gospel that citizens must pay their television licences.
Yesterday morning, the TV Licences task team sprang into action at the country’s hub and about 30 retailers and a clinic were visited.
From the outlets visited, over 15 people were arrested for contravening the Swaziland Television Act of 1983 that requires a television set owner to pay for licensing every year. The arrests were made on anyone found to be in charge of the company.
These were not put behind bars but had cases opened against them and will be expected to appear in court on Saturday.

The team, that was led by Project Manager Modicai Donga and Phumelele Dlamini, who is the Project Co-ordinator, were in the company of police officers when engaging on the exercise to take law offenders to task.
Before the operation commenced at around 9am, Manzini Regional Commander Simon Mlilo was briefed on what was expected of the police officers who were engaged and how the offenders would be treated by the police and the court of law.
Explaining the process to Mlilo was Donga, who said the sole purpose of the exercise was not to incarcerate people but to push them to comply with the law and pay their TV licences. He said this was because the number of people who heeded the call to pay up was unsatisfactory.

Donga stated that the inspection was believed to be helpful in getting people to take this seriously.
In addition, Donga mentioned that according to Section 23 of the STVA Act, anyone who would be convicted of this offence would be subjected to spend six months behind bars with an option of a E500 fine. For this, Donga said some magistrates were trained on handling such cases.

“To prove to people that it is an offence not to pay their TV licences, they would have to be arrested and appear before court even if they agree to pay up,” Donga said.
He said this was more so because the fact that one would have been confronted for disregarding the law, hence they would have disobeyed the law. 
On its first operation, the task team inspected various retailers around town.

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