Revised Act on prohibited materials to be reviewed
A revised Act on penalizing offenders found with prohibited materials if passed by Parliament this year could mean two years imprisonment and a fine of K10,000.
The Act, which was being reviewed after 25 years, is currently with the state solicitors for a certificate of necessity before it is presented in Parliament.
The current penalty is a spot fine of K1000 and less, to which the Chief Censor Steven Mala said may seem too low. But he said: “It is stated in the law and we can’t do much about it until then.”
He said over the years the office continues to confiscate “quite a number of items” for disposal, but have “yet to prosecute anyone” since everyone seemed to be a first offender.
“As a first offender, we just give them warning. We don’t take them to court,” he said.
Deputy chief censor Jim Abani also said under the law, the censorship office can only warn offenders, and so far no one has committed a second offence to have the office penalise them.
“You cannot actually go and charge them…firstly we have to make known to them and give them a warning. But if it’s the second time around, that’s when we go hard on them,” he said.The new Act could also look at identifying the degree of the offence committed and charged accordingly, say K10,000 for a person while a corporate entity could pay K50,000 or more. Asked about the type of measures put up against online accessing of illicit content, Mr Abani said the 25-year-old Act is of 1989 and does not exactly specify how the office should carry out these penalties for which the new Act is tasked with. He also made it clear that it was not the responsibility of the office to control how much information children can access online.
“Mobile phones and accessory gadgets, these are all developments of technology and you cannot restrict children from using them. It is their parent’s responsibility,” Mr Abani said.
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