THE Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation said on Tuesday that programmes of the FM-101 Larkana were being aired by its AM station since strong winds brought down the FM mast in December.

The PBC, in a clarification of a story carried by Dawn in its Tuesday issue “FM 101 Larkana off the air since Dec”, said a new mast had now been put into place and a 2.5 kilowatt transmitter, along with an antenna, had been sent to Larkana. “This transmitter is more powerful and advanced than the previous one and its installation will take a few days,” the corporation said.

According to PBC, Rs 30 million had been allocated for the purchase of a 100KW medium wave transmitter in the current year's budget, and not in the previous year's as mentioned in the Dawn story.

In reply to an assertion made in the news item that FM 101 and the medium wave radio “failed to broadcast live coverage” of Benazir Bhutto's death anniversary, the PBC said “Live coverage was carried out through a special FM transmitter sent to Garhi Khuda Bakhsh from Karachi.”