Saturday, February 26, 2011

Singapore scrapping Radio and TV Licences

The Singapore Government announced last Friday that it has decided to scrap compulsory radio and TV license fees. Malaysia is ahead on this as licences for radio and tv have been scrapped many years ago.

Besides, the licence fees paid in Singapore were a lot higher than what Malaysians used to pay. In Singapore, all residences with working TV sets have had to pay an annual fee of $110 per household, even if the sets not used to watch TV programmes, say, for playing console games and watching DVDs or only cable programmes.

Similarly, all vehicle-owners with a working radio set had to pay the $27 radio licence, even if it was used for playing CDs or MP3 music files.

I believe our radio and television licence was just RM24 a year. Correct me if I am mistaken.

6 comments:

  1. oh really?? i didn't know we used to have to pay for TV and radio licenses~~

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  2. SK - you so young ah, didn't remember we had to pay TV license? LOL

    I think it was RM24. My mom put the license in a frame and hung it over our TV last time. ;)

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  3. this TV/radio license fee is too labour-intensive to enforce - need officers to go to homes & check.

    easier to just increase GST to top up govt coffers.

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  4. Echo Lina's comment which my parent did the same frame up the RM24 TV & radio licence. haha

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  5. SK, LOL! Radio and TV licences were only scrapped a few years ago. Lucky you that you need not have to bother with such things.

    Lina, we used to have it framed up and located next to the tv too. It was a requirement to have it displayed for inspection by the authorities. Glad it's a thing of the past.

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  6. Doc, so true - both counts. Yeah, there are lots of ways to make the people pay for ridiculous projects.

    Bananaz, good riddance, eh?

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