Radio listeners irked by frequent power cuts

CHITRAL, March 17: The listeners of the state-run city radio station here have complained about suspension of transmissions during power outage which has reduced the broadcast duration to their misery. Zahid Ali of Atalique bazaar said that he had been a regular listener to the city radio station since its inception in 1990. But, he added that it was shocking for him to note that the station’s performance was marred by power outages. Ali said after the FM transmitter was closed down last year the transmission was carried out through AM transmitter which was too weak to give clear signals. He said that for the local people the radio had been a major source of information and recreation, but the poor infrastructure had badly affected its performance. Dr Inayatullah Faizi, a former project manager of an IUCN project in Chitral, said that the radio station had been playing a vital role in the daily lives of local people, but its poor reception and reduction in its duration had frustrated them. He said that despite having been established 25 years ago, the radio station still covered less than one per cent of the total area of Chitral. Faizi called for installation of a powerful transmitter to cover whole of the district. “The radio can be used to impart training to rural people, including women, in natural resource management and farming to help them earn a good living,” he said. When contacted, an official at the radio station acknowledged that transmissions got suspended during power outage as they had no budget to run generators. He said the radio transmitter was housed in a rented building on the outskirts of the city, but there were no funds for payment of the rent either. The official said that the total duration of the transmission was five hours and 40 minutes during which programmes in three languages, Khowar (Chitrali), Urdu and Pashto, were broadcast. The official said that the transmission could be received at a radius of only five kilometers because the actual output of the 250watts transmitter was only 30watts.–zahiruddin]]>