CHITRAL, Oct 14: Only a small fraction of the population of Chitral district receives programmes aired by the city radio station which went on air in 1993. Donated by the Australian government, the transmitter is 250 watts which covers only a radius of 10 kilometres.

Only two union councils out of 24 benefit from the transmission of the radio station while the rest are still waiting for it to be upgraded.

Stretched over an area of 14,850 sq km, the district is one-fifth of the whole Frontier Province and due to its proximity with Afghanistan and Central Asia, geo-strategic importance is attached to it.

Radio is the main source of entertainment and education for the masses living in the far-flung areas as signals for TV programmes can only be received within a radius of six km. Besides, about 70 per cent of the population is without the facility of electricity.

People living in the remote areas of the district had pinned their hopes on the local radio station but it still remains a dream for them.

The masses in the villages can be educated in a better way with the help of radio programmes in Khowar, the local language spoken throughout the district.

Regarding the popularity of radio programmes, a source in the radio station said that on an average 1,500 letters were received from listeners every month.

Due to the low coverage of the station, the standard of the programmes is also of a low quality and the duration of transmissions is only four hours daily.

The preservation and promotion of the unique Kalash culture is also possible with the help of radio.

Khowar programme in Chitrali language was started in 1965 from the Peshawar radio station and it was mainly due to this reason that the language came to be preserved in a written form as the scripts of the programme were to be written down.

A knowledgeable source in the station told Dawn that a transmitter of 10 kilowatts can cover hundred per cent area of the district. It is also strange that the mini-radio stations at Abbottabad, D. I. Khan, and Gilgit were upgraded which had been established much later than that of Chitral. Successive regimes in the past promised to upgrade the station but never did.

The incumbent federal information minister assured the local MNA Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali time and again on the floor of the NA for upgrading the radio station but no step has been taken so far.