PESHAWAR, Jan 8: The NWFP Cable Operators Association on Wednesday stopped the transmission of the cable television network throughout the province in protest against the damaging of the system of the OK Cable Network by some attackers.

Speaking to reporters at a press conference at the press club on Wednesday, the president of the association, Zubair Khalid, announced that the transmission of the cable television network would remain suspended till the government arrests the attackers who had destroyed the system and equipment of the OK Cable Network’s Nistarabad office on Tuesday night.

However, regarding the protest, he said that the operators would screen the PTV channels and Geo TV.

Giving details of the incident he said that it occurred at around 10pm on Tuesday when 30 masked men forced their entry into the office of the cable operator. They held the workers at gunpoint and destroyed the whole system, but the officials at the Gulbahar police station, which was hardly a few hundred yards away declined to register an FIR, he claimed and added that after the intervention of the police high ups the FIR was registered with a lapse of five hours.

Mr Khalid said that each of the 27 cable operators in the city had paid Rs50,000 as license fee to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (Pemra) in Feb 2001 and an addition amount of Rs25,000 annually for per 1,000 connections.

He claimed that the operators had invested their hard-earned money and were providing healthy entertainment to the people within affordable cost.

He said that the cable operators used electricity poles to distribute connections for which they paid Rs40 per pole to Wapda while the fee to install an amplifier was Rs300.

Each cable operator paid Rs26,000 for a decoder of Star Package, Rs3,000 for HBO, and Rs5,000 for multi-choice facility, he said and added that they also paid Rs5,000 to Rs8,000 as electricity bill.

Mr Khalid said that it was the responsibility of the government to protect the cable operators against the people who wanted to disrupt the system and demanded action against them.