RAHIM YAR KHAN, Aug 17: The Pakistan Television which collects revenue worth millions from viewers in the district pays no attention to improve its signals in this part of the Punjab.

A majority of the people who turn to PTV for different reasons are being forced to switch over to cable. The district has a population of 3.7million. Earlier, two of the four tehsils were getting weak signals, while the rest very weak or nothing. Now all the four tehsils are getting no signal.

In 1975, the government had acquired 23.5 acres of land in Jamaldinwali in Sadiqabad tehsil for installing a booster to provide PTV transmission to the people of this district. The project finally started in 1976 was completed in three years.

The main purpose of installing the TV booster was to provide clear PTV transmission in the district and its adjoining 65 square kilometer area. In addition, live transmission from Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Quetta centers was also to be telecast on some important occasions.

To provide strong signals to the Jamaldinwali booster, three nearby TV boosters are in existence - one at Shikarpur (Sindh), some 200 kilometres from it, the second at Shujaabad (Punjab), about 300 kilometres from it while the third one at Noorpur Mooro (Sindh), around 320 kilometres from it.

The Jamaldinwali booster provided excellent service from 1979 to 1998. From 1998 onward, the transmission from this booster started getting poor gradually.

In the beginning, the people did not care much about the signal problem, but after sometime, in the hope to get better results, they started changing the direction of their antennas. After 2002, the situation became worst. Even the antennas were raised from 10 to 15 feet high, but the problem of poor signals could not be resolved.

Jamaldinwali booster in charge Muhammad Aleem Amin told Dawn that clear PTV transmission was being provided to the Rahim Yar Khan district.

He said the Islamabad center provided signals to this booster from 6am to 4.25pm while the Lahore center from 4.25pm to 6pm. Two powerful generators were enough to continue the transmission in case of electricity failure, he said.

Rahim Yar Khan’s electronic market secretary-general Chaudhry Muhammad Islam Noorani said the TV set sale had affected badly owing to the poor PTV transmission. He said every customer wanted us assurance about the clear transmission, but the PTV booster had not been upgraded since long.

He claimed that a former ELC in charge told him some four years back that the PTV transmission was being provided through a four-feet digital dish as the booster tower was not functioning.

The booster machinery, he further said, was old while the PTV transmission had now been switched over to the digital system.

Meanwhile, the PTV collects Rs4.4 million monthly as TV license fee from subscribers through the Mepco (Wapda). The total number of subscribers in the district are 175,883, including 50,194 in Khanpur tehsil, 31,259 in Liaqatpur tehsil, 43,994 in Sadiqabad tehsil and 50,436 in Rahim Yar Khan tehsil.