Every news site should be registered with Media Ministry: Keheliya Rambukwella

By Yohan Perera and Ajith Siriwardana  

There is no move to regulate news websites but only to introduce a system under which every news site will have to register with the Media Ministry, Minister of Media Keheliya Rambukwella told Parliament yesterday.   
Minister Rambukwella who was responding to a question raised by Jathika Jana Balawegaya MP Harini Amarasuriya who said there  is a move to regulate news websites. She said the matter had already been discussed at the ministry’s consultative committee meeting.  

Mr. Rambukwella said the move to introduce a system to get the news websites registered was originally mooted during regime of President Mahinda Rajapaksa in 2014. There was only a move to introduce a system where the news websites were to be registered with a fee of Rs 100,000 and an annual fee of Rs 25,000. However some people opposed this and suggested that registration fees be reduced to Rs. 25,000 and annual fee be Rs. 5000 instead. We readily agreed to this. However nothing happened during the last five years. Therefore we took it up during our first consultative committee meeting” the Minister said.   

Ms. Amarasuriya also highlighted that some media personnel including Darisha Bastian had received threats recently.