News

PTV’s disruptive service in several districts

Published by TV Explore on January 27, 2010

The state-run PTV does not have enough resources to maintain its regular transmission in NWFP and adjacent Attock and Mianwali districts of Punjab as its transmission in these areas of the country is suspended every two or three hours for an hour or so due to loadshedding.

PTV is the only source of information and entertainment for the residents of villages and small towns of NWFP because of comparatively lesser access to cable system. The outage of its transmission first made those humble people worried about the country’s political situation but consistency of the problem made them realize it might be due to the loadshedding.

“I first thought that the Government has once again been overthrown, as it happened on October 12, 1999”, said Muhammad Wakeel, an aged man from village Jalala, district Mardan, who drew attention of this correspondent to the problem. “After a son of mine from Islamabad informed me that everything was apparently normal, I supposed the problem may be due to power outage”, he continued. It has been happening for a couple of weeks or so, he said.

The suspension of transmission takes place when loadshedding interrupts power supply to the main booster in Cherat, district Nowshehra, which covers NWFP and adjacent districts of Punjab province, a source in PTV Peshawar Station confided to TheNation. He informed that as per instruction from PTV Headquarters, Islamabad, since last month, the standby generators installed to the booster are not supplied with fuel due to which the regular transmission in the areas covered by the said booster is suspended every time there is a power outage. He further said that the boosters, which acquire signals from the Cherat booster, are also affected by the problem.

He, however, added that only the transmission of PTV Home and ATV is interrupted, as PTV News is transmitted from Islamabad.

When contacted, Managing Director PTV Arshad Khan was initially surprised to hear about the abrupt suspension of PTV transmission in the entire region. Later, he confirmed that they had tightened the respective budget allocations due to complaints of fuel theft. “But we haven’t tightened it to affect the transmission. Rather, we will surely come up with the genuine requirement of fuel”, Khan said. He said there were complaints that half the fuel supplied for the purpose was stolen.

He further said that he would thoroughly look into the matter and would inquire as to who is responsible for the mismanagement.

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