The Malawi Communications Regulatory Authority (Macra) says it will revoke all licenses whose operators have not been paying license fees.

Macra Director General Daud Suleman disclosed the this in Lilongwe during an engagement with senior media managers.

“There are other licensees that have not held up to their agreements and commitments, those ones by close of business today we would have reached the advancement of agreed deadline therefore the next day the Regulator will take the next step which will be to revoke the licensee,” disclosed Suleman.

According to Suleman, the licensees owe the Authority about K9 billion and the Authority has been engaging the operators since last year.

He said: “There were a number of licensees that had debt with the Regulator and the Regulator had engaged them and there was a process that started in December 2021.”

Whilst acknowledging the debt that broadcasters owe Macra, MISA Malawi Chairperson Teresa Ndanga pleaded with the Authority to consider the broadcasters pay the fees in installments.

We understand the mandate that Macra has and the obligation on part of the broadcasters, what we have been requesting is for us to meet midway.

Maybe they can consider giving installments over a period of time so that those debts are covered so that moving forward we have clear way forward how we proceed from here,” Ndanga said.

According to Macra the Broadcasting space owes the Authority about K750 million, telecommunication space K7.5 billion whilst in the postal space about K350 million.

These debts date back to 2014.