Gov’t Biggest Obstacle Against Media’s Access to Information: NAI

NAI-Supporting Open Media in Afghanistan warns that the government is the biggest obstacle against media’s access to information.

NAI reveals that the biggest contracts in Afghanistan are leading by the family members and relatives of the senior government officials.

“Accessing to the biggest contracts of the government is an obstacle for broadcasting them through media outlets,” said Sidiqullah Tawhidi, chairman of NAI.

Tawhidi noted that the media outlets attempt to collect important information but the government prevents them of complete access.

“Nearly 13 percent of Afghan media outlets pay attention to important cases, but when the government informs they fail to find the depth of the case,” Tawhidi added.

Meanwhile, NAI findings indicate that the process of digitalization of television is slow and the process costs a large amount of money from the government’s budget yearly.

“Visual media outlets welcome the process of digitalization and concern over the process to be stopped. Using digital costs $ 1 million per month which is 12 million dollars each year,” said Atiqullah Saket, legal advisor in NAI.

Since the governance of former President, Hamid Karzai many terrorist attacks have been occurred in Kabul and other provinces and fact-finding commission assigned for investigation, but none of them has revealed the facts so far.

By ZackArya & Elaha Omari