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File Photo: Dire Dawa

Ethiopia - Dire Dawa to launch TV transmission

By Muluken Yewondwossen

Capital

The Dire Dawa City Administration has signed a contract agreement with EURO-Tel, an Italian telecommunications company, to build a television transmitter, on December 15, 2007 at Dire Dawa.

According to Misrak Worku, manager of City Administration, EURO-Tel will be supplying equipment and will install the TV transmitter for 6.6 mln ETB. It is expected to be completed in three months. “Until that we will have production and other back log works,” Misrak told Capital.

“The studio was already built a few months ago by Aska Computers, a local company, at a cost of one and half million ETB. Currently the Dire TV program is carrying out production work in this studio,” he said. Dire Dawa City Administration has started transmission from September 2007 on Ethiopian television for twenty minutes. “We will continue our twenty minute program on ETV even after our own station is launched,” Misrak added.
When the Dire TV station starts transmission, it has a plan to transmit for two hours a day in three languages; Amharic, Oromifa and Somali. There will at the same time be ETV transmissions and Roomies TV programs on other two channels.

“This project has a great importance in providing information to our society on different aspects, especially development issues,” Misrak said. “We are training our employees to develop their capacities until the transmission work is completed. In addition we will employ professionals when our transmission starts,” he added.

EURO-Tel signed the contract agreement with Oromia Regional State government to build a television station and ten transmitters for 31.5 mln ETB last week.