By Momodou Darboe
The managing director of QTV has responded to complaints by some religious preachers that they have not been given access to the facility or given airtime to their programmes.
According to the complainants, the station’s preaching sessions are dominated by only two Islamic scholars out of hundreds in the country.
“I, like many others, need a bigger platform like the QTV to conduct my preaching sessions but it looks like that the station is the sole preserve of the Jahs and Kahs,” a despondent Islamic preacher of repute told The Standard lately.
The Standard also spoke to some Islamic preachers who also observed that the station has a very wide following and should therefore embrace diversity in its selection of scholars to propagate Islam to thousands of its viewers as the state broadcaster GRTS does.
Responding to these criticisms in a conversation with The Standard, the Managing Director of QTV, Malick Kah, explained that unlike GRTS, QTV cannot give platform to all the hundreds of Islamic scholars as it is a private entity.
“QTV is a private institution and cannot be like Radio Gambia which is of public ownership,” Kah stressed.
According to him, comparing GRTS to QTV amounts to drawing parallels between apples and oranges.
He added: “You cannot compare apples and oranges. However, we have given slots and access to variety of people from different backgrounds, cultures and locations and I don’t see any issue in that. So you see where there is no issue, they would like to create an issue.”
Kah however explained that everyone is free to buy airtime with the station to propagate any religion.
“We are not here to balance because anybody can buy airtime if you want to have a programme to propagate any religion of your choice,” he said. He, however, dismissed as untrue allegations that only the Jahs and Kahs are dominating the QTV Islamic preaching programmes.
“That’s not true,” he argued. “If you look at the Imams that come to the station, they are not entirely the Kahs or the Jahs; they come from all over The Gambia; some of them we don’t even know and they preach in Mandinka, Jola, Fula, Sarahule etc. So, I don’t know how much more diverse that can we be. The allegations are simply unfounded,” he concluded.
