Staff Reporter MASERU — Communications Minister Tšeliso Mokhosi has pledged to help a young Mosotho entrepreneur who founded a community radio station in Mabothile in Butha-Buthe. Taoana Lerole’s Moeling FM community radio station was at the centre of a dispute with the Lesotho Communication Authority (LCA) earlier this year after it was declared illegal. The authority in February shut down the radio station claiming it did not have a license.
But on Friday, the 22-year-old Lerole received a massive boost when Mokhosi said he will make sure his radio station does not go through the same troubles again.
Lerole, who only attended school up to Standard Five, only had a radio mixer and a 15-metre long stick attached to a pine tree as a transmitter behind his parents’ house. He worked as the station manager and invited his peers in the village to work as announcers to broadcast news in Mabuthile and surrounding villages. Mokhosi said the purpose of his visit was to study how the station could be helped to grow and become a viable broadcasting business in the rural area of Butha-Buthe. “This country needs thinking young entrepreneurs like this one,” Mokhosi said. “Despite his low level of education, young age, and the challenges of doing business in the rural areas he has pushed ahead and established a radio station.”
“The purpose of my visit here is to see where he needs help so that we can provide it.” Lerole, who never had an opportunity to attend school because of financial constraints, said he intended turning Moeling FM into a community radio station so that people in Mabuthile and surrounding villages can have a say in its running. “I am very grateful for this visit and believe I, together with the people in my village, will be helped to carry this project forward,” Lerole said.
“I still had hope that God would bring help from somewhere.” The LCA chief executive officer, Monehela Posholi, told local television on Friday that although the authority would want Moeling FM to grow and prosper, it was built in a way that would be dangerous to the lives of people living around it.
“Its transmitter is put at a place where it is easy to attract lightning, and this in itself poses danger to people around this area,” Posholi said.