RADIO BROADCAST

Dr Kanwaljit Soin asked the Minister for Information and the Arts if he will consider extending the range of our overseas shortwave radio broadcasts from regional to global reach as some of our students are studying in the United Kingdom, Australia and North America.

BG George Yong-Boon Yeo: Radio Singapore International (RSI) went on air on 1st February 1994 as a regional service. The principal aim of the service is to reach out to Singaporeans and friends of Singapore in the region.

We have started RSI as a modest service. We will review the performance and audience feedback before we commit ourselves to expansion. It is difficult, however, to envisage RSI becoming a global shortwave service. The infrastructure and investment required are prohibitive, and it is not our aim to be a BBC or a VOA.

However, while we will not be a global service, we will try to extend the reach of our shortwave services where practical so that they are available to as many listeners as possible. One way is to use spare transmitting capacity available in other countries.

Students in the US, UK and Australia who do not have RSI can turn to other sources of information on Singapore such as Singapore produced by SIF, The Singapore Bulletin produced by MITA and the Overseas Weekly newspaper produced by the Straits Times. All these have current information about Singapore.