An appeal for Bauchi Radio casual staff

Bauchi State-owned community FM radio station is considered as an unmatched pre-eminent lantern and pedagogical tool playing a key role in shaping the lived of all categories of individuals, especially those living in rural areas and remote regions.

It is, however, unfortunate that poor manpower is currently throwing a spanner into the works of the entire BRC FM radio sub-stations, including their mother station in the state capital, following the retirement of virtually all their permanent workers.

This sorry situation compelled managers of the entire radio stations to resort to volunteering casual workers.

Given the significance of these allembracing media organs, the governor should please pay back these volunteering casual workers who dedicated their valuable times to serve their dear state by absorbing them into the state’s civil service.

In August last year, even the chairman of the Bauchi State Council of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Comrade Umar Saidu, pleaded with the governor, Bala Mohammed Abdulkadir, to offer approval of an employment for those self-sacrificing and volunteering casual workers of the state-owned media houses, namely BRCs and BATV so as to replace those who have retired.

Being a former journalist and a former radio presenter, who is well aware of the key role that community radio stations play in educating people; I appeal to the governor to kindly look into the issue of casual workers.

Besides, the attention of the governor should be brought to the fact that apart from poor manpower, the entire BRC FM radio sub-stations are suffering from lack of perimeter fences that resulted in the loss of valuable properties in recent years.

Mustapha Baba Azare wrote from Bauchi State