Wednesday, October 08, 2014

FM 97.8: New Chinese radio station in Sri Lanka

I don't often listen to the radio but a friend of mine rang me yesterday and told me to listen to 97.8 FM - he said it was a new Chinese station.

I tuned in briefly today and it does seem to be manned by Chinese (judging by the accents) and it seemed to carry some news about China. According to my friend, he heard advertisements for Sinhala and Tamil classes, so it seems to be aimed at the growing population of Chinese workers in the country.

China is heavily involved in Sri Lanka, the presence of a radio station that appears to be catering to Chinese workers is an indication of the depth of the involvement. There was a report (towards the bottom of this article) of a Chinese-run restaurant catering to Chinese workers.

I have no objection to free movement of labour provided it is happens within a competitive open market. If the projects were awarded on the basis of open competitive tenders and the winning bidders found it cheaper or more productive to employ foreign workers then there is no major issue.

Local workers should have the opportunity to work for the Chinese projects, if
they were unable to recruit locally at the wages offered or if the skills were lacking then relying on expats would be acceptable. This is not the case with these projects, everyone from the sweepers to the cleaners to the cooks come from China presumably because they prefer to work with their own people.  This I think is wrong.

Related post: Chinese aid not working

Addendum: Does anyone know if the new station is a part of SLBC? Due to lack of funds/programming the SLBC used to rebroadcast the BBC on its own frequency during the day (from about 9am to about noon and then again from around 1pm or 2pm until around 5pm). The BBC pulled out of the arrangement after the SLBC started to censor some stories. Could this Chinese channel be a replacement for the BBC ? 

Update : The programmingin the morning (at around 7-8am) is in English. During the middle of the day it is in Chinese.  

  

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

That my friend is news! Haven't brought my hands-free to office so I'll make a note of it.

"If the projects were awarded on the basis of open competitive tenders...."

You think? ;) It's only a numbers game!

Anyhow I'm glad that it is the Chinese instead of the Indians. just imagine..

Jack Point said...

Better the Chinese than the Indians? Hmm, well if it were films I would definitely prefer Indian, on the basis of the beauty of their actresses....;)

Anonymous said...

Haha..All Indian movies aside, you wouldn't hear the end of it when it comes to Cricketing season.
Doordarshan would surpass the number of viewers when compared with all local channels.
Virat Kohli and Dhoni would be in every single TV advertisement.
There would be repeat telecasts of matches they won..
You'd want that bro? Believe me you. It's pure HELL, I'm tellin ya..

Jack Point said...

Hmm you do have a point, and some chinese actresses like Shu Qi are gorgeous..;)