THE Government was criticised yesterday for the ''meagre'' amount of money allocated to RTHK for the coming fiscal year.
United Democrats legislator Mr Man Sai-cheong accused the Government of depriving Hongkong citizens of good quality television productions by cutting the station's revenue in real terms.
RTHK has been allocated $303.3 million in the budget for the coming fiscal year, compared with $297.2 million for 1992/93.
But Mr Man told the Legislative Council RTHK's budget had been slashed in real terms by 16 per cent over the past three years.
He claimed this had led to manpower cuts of 12 per cent and the slashing of programme production from 12 hours to only nine hours a week.
''Although there will be a 2.1 per cent growth in the coming year, after taking into account the inflation rate, we can see that the provision has actually been cut.
''This will definitely result in a shortage of production resources in RTHK,'' he said.
