DUSHANBE, April 16, Asia-Plus — Over the past several days, administration of the media holding Orieno-Media has sent three official letters to Tajikteleradiocom (joint-stock company at the Ministry of Transport and Communications in charge of distributing radio frequencies), expressing concern over suspension of Imrouz’s services.
Speaking in an interview with Asia-Plus, Rustam Joni, the director general of the media holding Orieno-Media, which is founder of the radio station Imrouz (Today), said that the radio station has not aired since April 8. Through Tajikteleradiocom specialists’ sluggishness thousands of radio listeners in Dushanbe have not been able to listen to Imrouz for more than a week, Joni said.
“Non-fulfillment by them of their contractual obligations has lead to violation of Article 27 of the RT Law “On the Press and Other Mass Media,” said Mr. Joni. “If urgent works on resumption of Imrouz’s services are not done, we reserve the right to solve the issue judicially.” “This confusion has given rise to preposterous rumors and inventions among the population over the suspension of the radio’s services.”
In the meantime, the Tajikteleradiocom technical director Fayzullo Solehov noted that all allegations of founders of the radio station Imrouz about infringement of laws by Tajikteleradiocom are “unfounded.”
“Suspension of the radio’s services has been caused by only technical problems and solution of these problems depends not only on our specialists,” said Solehov, “The point is that the retransmitter is located in remote mountain area of Guskhor in the Varzob district. Because of recent torrential rain it is now practically impossible to get to the area. Besides, we need spare parts for repairing the retransmitter. In Tajikistan, there are no spare parts for the equipment that has been imported from foreign country.”
He expressed confidence that spare parts will be delivered into the country soon and their specialists will be able to repair the retransmitter.
We will recall that the Dushanbe radio station Imrouz has aired on the FM radio frequency of 107.6 in Dushanbe since August 2007.
