IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS AT EBIS

MBABANE - The country’s national broadcaster, EBIS, has been punished by yet another parastatal for failure to pay its debts.

This time, it is the Eswatini Posts and Telecommunications Corporation (EPTC) that has disconnected its services to the Eswatini Broadcasting and Information Services (EBIS).

On Tuesday, this publication reported that the station’s employees had been forced to use one toilet which is in a deplorable state after the Eswatini Water Services Corporation (EWSC) enforced its routine disconnections of water supply.
With the latest incident, information gathered is that the broadcaster allegedly owes EPTC a phone bill amounting to E3.5 million which led to the disconnection being effected early this week.

Interviews

According to impeccable sources, seeing that there was trouble in paradise, the radio station’s authorities allegedly instructed some of the programme directors to inform some of the guests, who had been scheduled for interviews through the phone instead come to the station.
This allegedly took place on Tuesday.

“A cellphone belonging to one of the senior managers was used to call the scheduled guests and request them to at least try and make plans to go to the station for their interviews. This was done since it was not going to be easy to interview them over the phone since there had been a disconnection,” said the source.

Understanding

It was gathered that while other guests were understanding, others raised a concern that it did not make sense for them to come to the station for just interviews that were less than 10 minutes. In an interview with EPTC Corporate Communications Manager, Nqobile Magagula, she confirmed that the parastatal had disconnected the radio station’s telephone lines.

“Yes, we switched them off. However, I am unable to confirm the exact figure that is being owed,” she said.
Magagula stated that they were currently engaged in a disconnection exercise for customers who had outstanding debts with the corporation.
“We urge all our customers who owe to kindly pay to avoid termination of service,” she said.

The radio station uses telephones to get representatives of various organisations for the different phone-in programmes that it airs on a daily basis.
In particular, the station makes use of the telephones to feature people for the much loved morning programme called Letishisako.
The programme allows listeners to be kept abreast with current affairs and educational feedback.

Also, government ministries make use of the programme to clarify issues affecting service delivery or concern the people in the country.
Efforts to get a comment from EBIS Director Martin Dlamini were not successful as his phone rang unanswered when called yesterday.
However, Principal Secretary in the Ministry of Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) Maxwell Masuku confirmed knowledge of the issue.

Engage

“They did notify us, we are currently preparing to engage EPTC to request that they suspend the disconnection while we work on sorting out the debt,” said Masuku.
Worth noting is that this is not the first time that the station faced the predicament of having their telephone lines disconnected as it also happened early this year where guests found  themselves being cut during interviews.
This was due to the fact that those presenting the programmes were given airtime for the interviews, which at times ran out even before the guests had finished talking.

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