VoM - an appreciation

Thanks to the article by Victor Galea (May 9), the Voice of the Mediterranean was correctly shown as a real "alternative approach to broadcasting Malta worldwide".

As the secretary general of the Italradio Committee (a non-profit group promoting international broadcasting in Italian), I know that the VoM received mountains of letters daily and e-mails from all over the world asking for all sorts of information about Malta.

It was, therefore, a great pity that the station closed down on December 31, 2003, after having been awarded the Italradio Prize only a few weeks earlier.

Italradio does hope Malta might reconsider the opportunity of having shortwave programmes in different languages. We had already protested with the Maltese authorities in 2003 but no decision was taken by the authorities.

During our visit to Malta in October 2003, we had contributed towards the organisation of a meeting with broadcasters and listeners from seven European countries and the US about multilingualism in international radio.

Everyone was delighted with the effort Malta was making in keeping in touch with the world and promoting the island through short-wave broadcasting.

With the help of the European DX Council - an association of short wave listeners' clubs - we consigned to the VoM a collection of radio publications from different countries which were intended to integrate the VoM library and its records' archive, many of them dating back to the times of the British Forces Broadcasting Services. Has the closing down of the station led to the loss of that precious material?

Let me finally extend wishes and appreciation for the work VoM staff were able to achieve during the 15 years of the station's history.