BOTH the Taraba State radio and television have not been functioning for over a month due to use of obsolete equipment.

Unlike the state television, which still manages to transmit for about three hours daily, the radio station has totally been out of transmission.

The reasons, according to the General Manager, Sani Sule Saleh, are connected with lack of equipment, which include power-generating sets, transmitters, among others.

He said: "There are other problems which we have been reporting. Personally, I know that a radio station needs additional back up. You cannot have a station where only one transmitter will be working daily without a backup".

Saleh, who spoke yesterday with journalists at the station's premises, described the transmitter as "the heart of the radio that can fail at anytime".

"If we have a backup power generating set here, probably the station" according to him, "would have been different. We would not have been off air", he submitted.

For the state government to achieve its desire of information dissemination, he stressed the need to urgently fund the station, which he said, has five transmitting stations in different parts of the state, all of which are currently out of service.

"If this station is to serve the people of Taraba State as it is meant to, then definitely a lot more has to be done because all these equipment have been working for the past four to six years without stopping.

"So we definitely need intervention through massive infusion of funds for the purchase of equipment in our station", he concluded.