Alex FM rebuilding kitty bulges with handsome donation
ALEXANDRA -– The NLC just hopes the donation will go a long way towards reviving the station, says Letwaba.
A whopping R2 million has been thrown into the bulging kitty for the rebuilding of Alex FM that was destroyed by the recent wave of looting.
The largest so far donation to the rebuilding of the community radio station came from the National Lotteries Commission (NLC), whose chief operations officer Philemon Letwaba described it as a pro-active gesture that needed no application.
“I must make it clear that under normal circumstances people wanting funding have to apply to the commission, but in this case, Alex FM never applied at all. We used our prerogative under the mandate that allows us to be pro-active in times of dire need,” Letwaba said before he handed over the dummy cheque.
Letwaba said the only catch in this instance is that organisations are required to sign a contractual agreement which binds them to precisely use the money toward what has been agreed upon in terms of what the money will be used for.
“Another feather in the cap of Alex FM is that the community radio station has continually received clean audits for the past six years, and we never ever hesitated that there will be proper accountability when it came to the use of the funds provided,” Letwaba added.
Letwaba said their donation was motivated by a realisation of the fact that the national fiscus was currently
over-stretched as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and may not be able to respond to all requirements, and hence, ‘we thought this important community asset could not be allowed to collapse’.
The Alex FM donation will not be the end, as the NLC will from here move to Soweto and later KwaZulu-Natal to other deserving institutions that also fell victim to the widespread looting. “We just hope our little efforts will go a long way toward reviving these institutions.”
Alex FM board chairperson Isaac Mangena thanked the NLC for ‘handsomely’ throwing into the kitty of the #RebuildingAlexFM. “I also want to thank the law enforcement officer present here today to ensure that we do not get looted of this donation before we even lay our hands on it.
“The road toward our #RebuildingAlexFM will certainly be long but not that lonely with friends and partners such as yourselves and others that continue to pour into the kitty. People who did [the looting] surely do not have the welfare of the community at heart.”
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