Private television station Natseven TV Sdn Bhd will not scrap its popular Mandarin evening news, said Deputy Energy, Water and Communications Minister Shaziman Abu Mansor today.

When met at the Parliament lobby, Shaziman said he spoke on the phone with Natseven's chief executive officer Shazali Ramly regarding this matter.

According to him, Shazali said the station will continue with the news segment but "will do some re-branding and this may involve the adjustment of the time".

Shazali also told the deputy minister that he did not know that the news segment had a huge following among the Chinese community.

Responding to a question, Shaziman said if it is a good programme then it should be retained.

During the debate earlier, Dr Wee Ka Siong (BN-Ayer Itam), Liow Tiong Lai (BN-Bentong) and Teresa Kok (DAP-Seputeh) told the House that the Chinese community wants the news broadcast to continue.

Ramadhan programmes

Last week, Natseven TV, popularly known as ntv7, decided to axe the evening news, which goes on air daily from 5pm-5.30pm, starting Oct 18. However, its nightly 10-minute Mandarin news will be retained.

According to sources, the management planned to drop the news segment to allow the readjustment of its programmes schedule and enable more air time for Malay programmes for the coming Ramadhan month.

The matter was also raised during the MCA annual general assembly over the weekend, where Deputy Information Minister Donald Lim said he would raise the matter with the station's top executives.

Contacted this afternoon, the deputy minister said he tried calling Shazali on Monday but was told that the latter was attending a meeting overseas.

"When I called on Monday, they told me Shazali will come back on Thursday, but when I called again just now, I was told he was not in the office," he added.

Malaysiakini also could not obtain comments from ntv7 regarding the issue.

On Sunday, Chinese newspapers published the proposed scrapping of the news segment on their front-pages. Political and Chinese organisation leaders also condemned the move.

Meanwhile, the Chinese papers also reported today that 12 Youth wings of state Chinese assembly halls issued a statement urging ntv7 to take heed of the community's wishes.

The station began operations in 1998. Former agriculture minister Effendi Norwawi is the executive chairperson of Encrop group, which owns ntv7.