At least 250 phones were reported to have been consumed by fire out at the charging Kiosk in Turalei, Warrap state. The incident happened on Wednesday morning around 4am, in one of the local mobile phone charging stations close to MTN network tower.
Most of the phones and batteries burned beyond recognition except the twenty mobile phones and three laptops computers that were rescued.
Aguek Manyuon is the owner of the charging station which he established in 2016. He says the losses is huge because he is still doing damage assessment to know the number of losses.
He says he was sleeping in a nearby residence when they hear bursting sound that alerted them about the fire, and they immediately rushed to the shop. Manyuon said the cause of fire is not yet known but says it started at around 4 am.
He told Mayardit FM that they found most of the things burned and their first attempt was to extinguish the fire, using water and switched the power source. “We switched off the power and poured in the water to extinguish the flame but was not managed, then tried to save few things that we managed to remove from the fire.”
One of the phone owner who walked to the center after hearing the news of fire Simon Koleng, says he need to be compensate for the burned devices.
Achuil Deng said he has brought the battery to be charged from the village and nowhere to get a new battery because he came from is very far to Turalei. “I need to be compensated because this charging center is open for commercial reason as people brought their phones for charging and pay”.
Dut Yach said he will have empathy toward the owner because it was not his own making and no one can be blame for the incident though it has destroyed his phone.
Lack of electricity connecting homes in remote areas across the country forced the people to charge their devices at public centers running small generators and solar power systems.