KARACHI, 19 February: SAMAA TV, one of Pakistan’s leading Urdu news channels has resumed its transmission after experiencing an extensive fire in their Karachi head office building early Thursday morning, causing extensive damage to technical and office equipment.
The fire, which broke out early Thursday morning, started in the ground floor of the 19 floor building, from where SAMAA operates and extended to the rest of the building, which caused SAMAA operations to shut down.
“Our technical and operations team has been working incessantly to restore the transmission, so that we may continue to report on the latest news updates for our loyal viewers”, said Chief Executive Officer Amir Jahangir. “I would like to especially acknowledge our head of operations, Mr. Shahid Ur-Rehman and his dedicated team, who worked continuously to get SAMAA back online within such a short period of time,
considering the extensive damage which our technical equipment has suffered”.
Speaking to Mr. Shahid Ur-Rehman, Head of Operations, he said that SAMAA news transmission was restored within a few hours. “We continued to provide latest news feeds through our website, which has been successfully visited and studied by our viewers. Due to the link down of SAMAA on screen, our website has received 5 times more hits in a day than on an average, which shows our loyal viewership and credibility as a news channel”.
The fire resulted in extensive damage of office machinery, cameras, and computers, along with official record. The cause of the fire is still under investigation by officials, who will soon be making a report on the incident and its causes.
