Thursday, October 07, 2004

ETV PROGRAMME A TOTAL FAILURE: A-G REPORTS

A-G’s Report: Most Schools do not watch.
SYSTEMIC FAILURE KEEPS UNFOLDING

The Education television (ETV) programme, which costs the Government millions of ringgit each year, has failed to meet its objective because most schools are not utilising the facility.

According to the Auditor-General’s Report 2003, most schools do not watch ETV for reasons ranging from faulty equipment to the programmes clashing with the timetable. A total of 8,860 schools have the facilities to watch ETV, carried on channel 13 of Astro.

The Government spends RM14.5 a week for each school to subscribe to Astro, which works out to about RM5mil annually. This payment includes the Education Package of Astro, which has the Discovery , National Geographic and Animal Planet channels. Since ETV was removed from RTM 1 and RTM 2 and placed under Astro in early 2000, the Government has paid Astro more than RM20mil for its services.

The A-G’s report revealed that 91.2% of 381 schools inspected randomly last year were not using the facility. It is learned that while some schools had left malfunctioning Astro devices unrepaired, others had functioning devices but did not have a TV set. The report stated that some of the TV sets and decoders had even being left sitting in the storerooms.

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