TURA: After the youth Congress in Meghalaya opposed the proposed scaling down of the DDK in Tura, the New Tura Development Forum (NTDF) has also raised opposition to the same and instead urged it to improve and upgrade the facility to provide better service to the people of the region.
In its memorandum addressed to Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Prakash Javadekar, the forum pointed out that doing away with local transmission from DDK Tura would deprived the indigenous Garo people of the hard earned developmental facility and urged his intervention in the matter.
Pointing out that there are only two DDK centres (one in Shillong) in the state, the forum said that shutting down the centre in Tura and clubbing it with Shillong would deprived the large chunk of the population of viewing programmes in their own language.
“The programmes (in Garo language) transmitted from DDK, Tura are viewed and listened not only by the viewers from Tura but by the whole of Garo population all-over five Districts of Garo Hills and from the adjoining areas of other States like Assam, etc. Besides Garos, the DDK promotes the other tribes like Kochs, Hajongs, Manns, Rabhas, Boros, Dalus, whose ethnicities are shown through the DDK channel. So, shutting down the DDK Tura will be unfair to the people of many communities,” the forum said adding, people of Tura and Shillong are of two major different linguistic communities who deserve transmission facilities of their own.
Reminding that the DDK Tura was first established a long time back during late P A Sangma’s tenure as Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting in 1995, the forum lamented that despite its long existence no improvements and developments were made to it to date.
The forum urged that instead of scaling down the centre at Tura, it should instead be upgraded by way of employment of more man power and upgrading it with powerful equipments and systems like Earth Station by satellite connections.