Kwara owned media houses protest

STAFF of the Kwara State Broadcasting Corporation, Radio Kwara, on Wednesday morning held a peaceful protest within the premises over poor working condition and lack of necessary working equipment.

The workers also said that there was insinuation that government was planning to sell the broadcasting house, located at Number 2, Police road, GRA, Ilorin which had been in existence for over four decades.

However, in his reaction, the senior special assistant to the governor on Media and Communication, Dr. Muideen Akorede, who commended maturity and passion of the workers, said that the stations are back on-air after a fruitful meeting.

The governor’s aide, who said that economic challenges in the country had affected government obligation on operational expenses, however, added that a sum of N5 million has been released to three media houses, namely Herald N1 million, KWTV N1.5 million and Radio Kwara N2.5million.

“Salary payment had been our first line charge. It’s only after salary that we do operational expenses. KWTV is the best in the country with the level of development we have put in place there. We are on refurbishment of Radio Kwara currently. You can check it. AM station equipment is old and some were blown off by thunderstorms recently. Efforts are on to get it going. We just bought new equipment,” he said.

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Against speculation that the state government was planning to sell the media houses to private hands, the governor’s aide said that there was no such plan to sell any of its media houses, adding that there was no reason to do that.

“The plan, however, was to migrate the AM station to FM station because of modern technology. When you buy a phone today, you only get only FM stations. More so, the media houses were set up by law and anything that will be done there has to be through House of Assembly,” he said.

Meanwhile, during the peaceful protest, the staff of the Kwara State Television Authority and Kwara State Printing and Publishing Corporation, the Publisher of the Herald newspapers joined their counterparts at Radio Kwara in solidarity to their plights.

The staff carried different placards with inscriptions such as, “A.M station must exist, Government must not sell Radio Kwara,” We need modern equipment at Radio Kwara.”

It was gathered that Radio Kwara which houses both the A.M and F.M stations have been shutting down for months, operating skeletal services due to lack of diesel to power the generating sets, while government is owing the station about three months running cost with last year’s outstanding running cost of about four months.

According to them, the lives of the staff are at risk with the station’s bushy environment, saying that reptiles had taken over the stations.