Polish foreign ministry to provide ?4.5 million to Belsat TV this year

Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has signed a directive allocating ?4.5 million to this year’s budget of Belsat TV, Agnieszka Romaszewska, former director general of the Polish-based, Belarusian-language channel, told BelaPAN.

The directive was signed a few days after Ms. Romaszewska’s dismissal from the post earlier this month.

The journalist said that Belsat TV also would receive a ?220,000 grant from the European Commission.

Ms. Romaszewska’s departure last week gave rise to speculation about the channel’s possible closure and its future was thrown into further doubt when Piotr Farfal, acting chief of Polish Television (TVP) which controls Belsat TV, said that TVP would not fund the station.

“In the past year TVP contributed no more than a quarter of the entire Belsat funding. And this was not money but the possibility to use studios, satellites, equipment. The main part of its funding comes from the Polish foreign ministry,” the journalist said.

Ms. Romaszewska said that she might make a comeback as the Belsat boss in the future. “This is my project. I am the founder of this channel and I expect to return to the channel. My mission there is not over yet,” she said, adding that she planned to focus on raising funds for the project in the near future.

Belsat TV started broadcasting on December 10, 2007 under an April 2007 agreement between TVP and the Polish foreign ministry.

The channel describes its mission as providing “accurate and independent coverage of events in Belarus, Europe and the rest of the world.”

Reporters based in Belarus, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Poland contribute to the broadcaster.

Belsat employs 70 people in Poland and about 120 in Belarus. Surveys suggest that about 200,000 people in Belarus watch the channel.

Belsat has been broadcasting six hours of programming a day since July.

Earlier this year the channel had its application for the registration of a correspondent bureau in Belarus rejected by the authorities.