Monday May 19, 2014
Kabul (BNA) National Radio Television of Afghanistan (RTA) will soon inaugurate a news channel after twelve consecutive years of hard works.
“Afghanistan is a country which exists on top of news headlines, we need to have a news channel beside National Radio Television so that we broadcast news as soon as possible, but the new channel will cover political and sports news,” Deputy Head of RTA Jalal Mahmoodi said. “RTA alone can’t cover all the news stories from provinces, new channel will help to cover all stories.”
“Our new channel is a newly established channel, it has a number of technical problems, currently, we can’t provide coverage to all province, we are trying to connect it with satellite soon, so that people in 34 provinces and even in Africa, Europe and America are able to watch it, this channel will broadcast programs in Dari and Pashto languages and efforts were underway to offer programs in local languages such as Pashaee, Turkmani, Balochi and Uzbaki,” Mohamoodi further added. “An amount of $ 450,000 had been allocated for establishment of news channel and necessary equipment would be purchased from this amount, already there are 25 people working in news channel,” he added.
“RTA broadcasts one week programs for Afghan armed oppositions, initially it was intended to establish a separate channel for ANSF to broadcast achievement of the armed forces services, we are already in touch with ISAF and third channel within the formation of RTA will be established after we receive agreement of ISAF,” Mahmoodi further said. “RTA is equipped with modern studios and 24 transmissions which offer programs in cultural, politics and other field,” he added. “RTA was also intended to establish two separate channels for parliament and Kabul municipality.
We discussed the matter with the parliament and Kabul municipality, but parliament has already received a frequency without agreement of RTA, we recommend parliament that the channel should operate under RTA, but so far we have not received any response from the parliament.” “RTA has 24 hours broadcasting, because of this, RTA needs more financial resources compared to other institutions, unfortunately, Ministry of Finance allocates money for RTA which it allocates for rest of the institutions, we have a lot of employees and it needs more budgets,” Mahmoodi stated. The News channel alongside broadcasting political programs will also focus on training, music and Afghani dramas.
