More People’s Parliament abuzz in Katutura
Base FM station manager, Marco Ndlovu with the broadcasting equipment of almost N$40,000 donated to the radio station last week to support the Katutura community to grow its scope of debate in preparation for the elections at the end of the year.
“The Base FM listeners are looking forward to the two-hour interactive debating platforms with a broad spectrum of society’s representatives such as political, civil, faith and community leaders” said station manager, Marco Ndlovu. He said the planned series of debates is made possible after one of the station’s presenters, Elton Jimmy, was trained by Deutsche Welle Akademie trainers on various aspects of election reporting.
According to Ndlovu the station is appreciative of the “invaluable and excellent” quality content of the training.
“It has been an eye-opener for our station’s trainee who eagerly took the training like a duck taking to water.
He has worked hard and optimized the opportunity as evidenced by the considerable improvement on his general knowledge and understanding of issues related to on-air-content.”
Base FM is one of the participating community radio stations in the EU-funded project, “Community Voices”, implemented by Germany’s media development organisation, DW Akademie.
Community Voices provide a new platform for local communities to make their voices heard and participate in a meaningful way in the electoral process.
On the difference the radio election debates will bring to the Katutura community, Ndlovu said. “A lot of difference will come from these programmes as the general public will be able to make informed decisions regarding their choice of vote.
It will also allow the leaders to explain their positions on certain issues which are not clear to the electorate, e.g. the necessity of constitutional changes recently tabled in parliament.” The public debates will be launched on 10 September and the bi-weekly debates are provisionally planned for 10 and 24 September, 08 and 22 October, and 5 November 2014. These debates will run on the station’s popular talk show known as Real Talk, “The People’s Parliament,” and the participants names will be released as soon as confirmed.
