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SIC and TVI warned today that the prohibition of contests with added value calls, recommended by the Ombudsman’s Office, “would have a strong impact” on televisions and “a significant drop” in state tax revenues.
The Ombudsman, Maria Lúcia Amaral, recommended to the Government the prohibition of television contests that use expensive telephone numbers to protect the elderly and other vulnerable groups.
In a joint statement, the two stations affirm that “the prohibition of holding television contests that use calls to numbers in the range 760-761, as proposed by the Ombudsman’s Office, in the midst of a pandemic and economic and social crisis, there would be a strong impact on the television operators SIC and TVI and on other elements of the value chain ”.
As “a consequent increase in precariousness in the entire audiovisual sector, which continues to cause a significant drop in tax revenues for the State,” warn SIC and TVI.
The television operators SIC and TVI were surprised by the news of the broadcast, by the Ombudsman, of Recommendation no. 7 / B / 2020 (with the topic: ‘Contests and hobbies – Telephone lines 760/761 – Consumer protection’), with important implications for the economic and financial sustainability of the respective activities, but on which they were not even consulted or listened to ”, emphasize the television networks.
SIC and TVI criticize the recommendation, considering that “it lacks reasons, is not based on objective technical elements and omits that television operators comply with the legal framework applicable to this activity, which is subject to the regulatory intervention of various entities, in addition to the obligations assumed by the televisions and derived from the current self-regulation ”.
Furthermore, the same recommendation “omits that calls to numbers in the range 760-761 have been and are frequently used for awareness campaigns and revenue collection for public interest and solidarity purposes, without benefit for television channels.”, SIC and TVI underline.
In the recommendation addressed to the Secretary of State for Commerce, Services and Consumer Protection, João Torres, Maria Lúcia Amaral argues that the holding of contests in which television stations use, in particular, “telephone lines in the range 760 and 761 , it must be unfeasible. ” “.
“Greater consumer protection is all the more important because, due to the current pandemic caused by covid-19, confinement provides a greater availability of people to participate in this type of competition,” the recommendation underlines.
The text of the recommendation to the Government was disseminated by the Portuguese Association of Consumer Law (apDC), based in Coimbra, chaired by the jurist and university professor Mário Frota.
In the recommendation to the Government, signed on October 19 and now released on Thursday by the apDC, Maria Lúcia Amaral also considers that “the holding of contests that call for telephone calls using numbers with prefixes 760 and 761, which are special rate increase numbers , compromises the fulfillment of the Gaming Law ”.
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