MBABANE — For about two hours yesterday morning, the Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Services (SBIS) radio station went dead quiet.
The Times Sunday news-room was flooded with calls from members of the public who wanted to know if the station had once again caught fire.
There have been two similar incidents last year where the national broadcaster caught fire.
The station went silent between 9am and around 11am.
A staffer at the station, which is currently getting a facelift, said the problem had been an electrical fault.
Fires
The past fires were also caused by electrical faults.
“As you know, there is a lot of construction going on around this place so such is bound to happen,” she said.
She said by the time she was interviewed, all was back to normal as their engineers were ‘quick’ to identify the problem.
Station Director Percy Simelane was not available for comment as he was reported to be in Djibouti, while his Deputy Jerome Dlamini did not answer his phone when called.
Apart from Voice of the Church (VOC), the Swaziland Broadcasting and Information Services remains the only national radio station in the country, whilst about six different companies have put in applications for commercial radio stations.
However, the licence regulator, the Swaziland Posts and Tele-communications Corporation (SPTC) has remained mum on the outcome of the applications.
Those interested in running their own radio stations included former Cabinet ministers S’gayoyo Magongo and John Carmichael.
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