By Abu Bakarr Kargbo
Over Le 300 million is needed to rebuild the City Media Center in Makeni City following a devastation caused by heavy rainstorm on Thursday, September 1, 2022.
The Management in Makeni is currently worried following a thunderstorm that swept through Field Road in Makeni City taking away the roofs of the building housing HOPE FM:93.3 and Provincial Times NEWSPAPER.
The storm did the same to the building housing City Bar and Restaurant and City Unisex saloon on 46 Rogbaneh Road.
Other building were affected, including the Makeni City Council building at the Main Lorry Park.
“We lost key equipment and documents to the torrential rain that followed thereafter,” said the Chief Executive Officer, Stanley Bangura Junior, who added that given the current predicament they will not be broadcasting until they would have fixed a new roof and replaced the affected equipment.
After a thorough impact assessment of the damage caused by the heavy rains, a technical team’s report suggested that 82% of the critical equipment was affected by the water.
The Team furthered that the roof and ceiling of the affected building hosting the CMC office needs an urgent exclusive overhaul.
“After post-disaster test on the said equipment, it was discovered that only about 17% could be repaired, while the remaining 65% were damaged beyond repairs. These include a 600 watt transmitter, two mixers, six desktops used for recording, editing, and production, eight portable studio speakers, two Apple laptops used for streaming on Radio Garden, our websites, etc,” the Team revealed and furthered that critical documents relating to the CMC work, plus tens of novels and media literature were also destroyed by rainwater.
City Media Management has stated that the loss incurred is so huge that it cannot hastily project a definite date, but it will certainly run into weeks, if not months if only left with our current economic situation to handle.
“We are weighing our options on possible temporal relocation if we can secure key equipment,” they stated.
The Management expressed profound gratitude and appreciation to its numerous callers, messages of sympathy, prayers, hope, and assurances received from family members, friends, colleagues, and partners, following the devastating thunderstorm that seriously affected their institution in the early morning hours of Thursday, 1st September 2022.