Bhubaneswar: Some of the community radio stations, which suffered massive destruction during Cyclone Fani around two months ago, are yet to resume operations thanks to the apathy of the Information and Broadcasting (I&B) Ministry.
Three important community radio stations in cyclone-hit districts of Puri, Khurda and Cuttack are now struggling to resume operations owning to the large-scale destruction caused to their broadcasting stations. Several of their recording, processing and broadcasting equipment have suffered damage, leading to disruption in their services.
To add to their woes, the I&B Ministry has not yet sanctioned “emergency grants”, which is disbursed to the community radios hit by calamities. Although assessment of the damages has been done by the central teams and the aggrieved community radios have approached the ministry for the same, no help is yet in sight.
“Three community radios suffered destructions due to Fani. We have approached the ministry to get the emergency grants for radio stations hit by the natural calamity but even after two months we are yet to get any aid. Meanwhile, our operations are totally shut for the last two months post Fani,” said NA Ansari, chairman of Radio Namaskar, Konark.
Ansari, who is also the president of Community Radio Association of India, added that the aggrieved radio stations from Odisha are constantly reaching out to the ministry for assistance but in vain. “What is the advantage of such corpus fund with the ministry if it doesn’t reach us in time? Due to the delay we have failed to reach out to the audience hit by the disaster to inform and empower them through information relating to the restoration and other issues.”
Fani has caused damage to community radios like Radio Namaskar (Konark), Radio Kisan (Khurda) and Radio Swaraj (Chandikhole).
The guidelines of Community Radio Support Scheme (CRSS) under the ministry read, “Emergency Grants: – To cover damages and repairs faced by community radio stations in extreme emergency situations like natural calamities, lightning, cyclone, etc,”
Community radios are the third tier of radio broadcasting system in India after commercial FM channels and public broadcaster-All India Radio (AIR).
The community radio stations are mainly owned by non-government organisations, charitable trusts, educational institutions and Krishi Vigyan Kendras.
They are meant to be hyper-local in nature and supposed to serve the local population with non-commercial information.
The community radio service is envisioned to empower the local population with knowledge and information relevant to them.
Manish Kumar, OP