209 press applications considered for official assistance

209 requests for access to aid private communication were considered by members of the National Commission on Thursday at the Ministry of Communication.

It was under the direction of the president of the commission, Issa Tchiroma Bakary. Areas of this aid include, general communication, online media, TV channels, developers, printing, commercial and community, radio, professional organizations and print media.

Records of the beneficiaries were selected according to certain parameters. "We agreed on a grid of decryption and it is applied according to the media having submitted request for help files. We have a very fair, very impartial manner and we are very pleased to announce that compared to last year, there was a little more applications," explained the president of the Commission.

And further: "we proceeded with the examination and we decided to allocate aid in accordance with the results which come to us as a result of the decryption of the grid that we applied to some and to others".

According to Issa Tchiroma Bakary, this assistance to the private communication translates the Cameroonian Government's efforts to have a quality purveyor of press jobs even if this press still carry out some practices that do not honour the profession like the handling of defamation.

And it is for this reason that measures to strengthen the economic viability of the media must be accompanied by consolidation of the newspaper industry. "It is question for regulators, generally at the level of the commission in particular, to ensure that those who received assistance are those who respect the principles of ethics of the occupation in accordance with the teachings received by professors", he added.

On the selected media, the president of the Commission reassured: "we examined 209 files and I cannot tell you how many have been selected. It is at the end of the work conducted by the permanent Secretary that you'll know exactly. "But I am announcing that we will give a press conference next week to speak about what we have done, how many files were eligible and why some were dismissed.