Thursday, December 04, 2008

Cambodia Wants To Establish Greater Cooperation With Malaysian Media

By Mohd Hisham Abdul Rafar

PHNOM PENH, Dec 4 (Bernama) -- The Cambodian government, in an effort to develop its people, especially the Muslim community, hopes for greater cooperation between the Cambodian and Malaysian media to facilitate dissemination of information.

Its Deputy Labour and Vocational Training Minister, Othsman Hassan, said this included magazine and newspaper publication as well as radio broadcasts.

"We are hoping for assistance from the Malaysian media to teach us how to produce magazines and newspapers and also to disseminate information through the radio," he said during a courtesy call by a member of the Yayasan Salam Malaysia's board of trustees, Datuk Ahmad A. Talib, to his office.

"When our media people are well-trained, they will be able to disseminate information to all levels of the society and also to correct negative perceptions about Islam," he said, adding that he wanted the Cambodian people, especially the Muslim community, to have access to information.

Othsman, who is also Minister of Islamic Affairs, said currently, Cambodia only had one radio channel, which uses the Champa language, specially for the Muslim community and hoped to have another channel in the Cambodian language by next year.

"We don't want to close the Champa radio channel because we don't want the language to disappear, but we want to have another channel in the Cambodian language because not all of the Champa community understand it," he added.

Othsman, who is fluent in Malay, said Cambodia had a population of 13 million people, including 5,000 Muslims.

Ahmad spent about an hour with Othsman during which they also discussed introducing the use of solar system to generate electricity for houses in the interior areas, which currently use generators.

Meanwhile, Ahmad, in response to Cambodia's request for assistance from the Malaysia media, said he would relay the matter to the media organisations, including Bernama.

"It'll be good if we can have a journalist exchange programme between Malaysia and Cambodia to understand each other's world of journalism. They will be able to learn faster," he added.

Yayasan Salam Malaysia (Salam), a non governmental organisation, and the Kedah veteran Malaysian Association of Youth Clubs, comprising about 50 volunteers, are in Cambodia on a humanitarian mission.

Besides providing aid to poverty-stricken Cambodians, they also help in building schools and mosques.

Salam and Kedah veteran MAYC also brought along various prayer necessities for the Muslim community as well as used clothing and 60 cows to be slaughtered for the Aidiladha celebration.

The beef will be distributed to about 3,000 residents in three villages -- Tropengbeang, Tanaksawai and Praksandai -- in the Kratie province.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I agree 100%, because Kingdom of Champa was part of the Khmer Empire

Anonymous said...

The Cham people who are the descendants of Champa will loose their identity if they too much follow the fundamental Islam from the middle east and the generalized Islamic law.

The Islam will ruin the value of islams such as Khmer-islam.

Anonymous said...

No more media, plzzzzz....

The Malaysian Explorer said...

For all the shortcommings Malaysia has it is still ahead of many other countries. However, for how long?


The Malaysian Explorer

Anonymous said...

Everyone is Cambodia friend!