By: Foday Manneh
The inauguration of the Kanifing Municipality Council (KMC) Radio Station scheduled for Tuesday, 20 December 2022, has been cancelled due to the inability to acquire a license for operations from the ministry of Information and communications.
“We spent a whole year building a radio station, and now it is ready to be handed over to the KMC. They will use it for two years while monitoring and collecting data to assess our achievement,” the Project Director, Alieu Nyang, told reporters.
“We applied for a license in July 2022, but it is not forthcoming. We understand there is an embargo. We did ask for an exemption, and it was not granted,” he added.
The project manager, Lamin Sanyang, said their initial objective was to inaugurate and hand over the radio station to KMC, who will continue efforts to secure an operating license.
However, there appears to be a general embargo on operational licensing for television and radio since 2020, forcing them to change Tuesday’s inauguration to an indefinite date temporarily.
The radio station named “People’s FM” is under the Kanifing Environmental Transformation Program (KETP) project funded by the European Union (EU) and can operate both online and on FM bands.
Sanyang said the radio is meant to promote sustainable living for the people of KMC.
“We understand that there is still a gap in the effective communication with residents of this municipality. And, this is one of our key challenges with environmental sanitation, so we felt it’s important to establish a radio to sensitize people on environmental issues,” he stated.
