More than 11,000 people have signed a petition to preserve RNW’s Dutch-language broadcasts. Iede de Vries, Chairman of the Action Committee, says that in addition there are about 7000 signatures from listeners who depend on programmes in one of the other nine languages. There are also separate petitions from former ambassadors, business and journalisitic organizations. Mr De Vries will lead a delegation from RNW who will hand the petitions to the Dutch parliament on Monday, prior to the debate about the substantial cuts in public broadcasting, including RNW.
Mr De Vries says several hundred people from around the world have also sent a personal letter to the Lower House. He says a lot of support has been received from the more than 3,000 partner stations worldwide that carry RNW programmes. He says he suspects that many MPs don’t know about many of the things that RNW does, and advocates a postponement of the decision, allowing the broadcaster to inform MPs about the consequences of the cuts. On Friday, the government announced that the current budget of 46 million euros would be reduced to just 14 million euros, a cut of 70 percent which will mean the loss of up to 250 jobs.
A reminder that a special live programme in Dutch will be on the air from The Hague tomorrow (27 June) at 0600-1200 UTC on the following outlets:
- 107.5 FM (In and around the Plein in The Hague next to the Dutch parliament building)
- 1296 AM mediumwave (For the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg)
- Shortwave 5955 and 9895 kHz (West, Central and SW Europe)
- Shortwave 13700 kHz from 1000 UTC (SW and SE Europe)
- Internet via these links on our Dutch website
- Satellite: Find the satellite serving your region on this page.
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