Govt stands with media workers: Fawad

ISLAMABAD: Minister for Information and Broadcasting Chaudhry Fawad Hussain Tuesday said the government stood with the media workers and was paying advertisement dues of media houses to stop them from laying off their employees.

Speaking at the floor of the National Assembly here, he said the government and the media owners had agreed that Rs1.3 billion of payments were pending and the federal government would further release dues of Rs180 million.

He said the immediate benefit of the payments would be to the media houses, reduce pressure on them and stem the activity of sacking media owners.

Earlier, the minister along with Parliamentary Secretary Andleeb Abbas and Zartaj Gul went to press gallery and talked to members of the Parliamentary Reporters Association who had walked out from the press gallery to protest over the sacking of media workers and non-payment of salaries.

The minister expressed his apprehension at the sacking of media workers and assured that the government would work with the media organisations to resolve the issue. He said despite difficult economic situation, the federal and provincial governments had released Rs460 million of advertisement dues of media houses.

The minister expressed solidarity with the journalists and said television channels and media houses made claims of Rs7 billion for advertisements released in the tenures of Nawaz Sharif, PPP and Pervez Musharraf.

The minister said the government would formulate a new advertising policy regarding advertisements and would consider giving advertisements directly. He said that a new media university would be set up as the media industry still had a lot of capacity to grow.

He agreed that whenever talks should be held with All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS) a 15-member delegation of journalist organisations should be made part of the negotiations.

PPI adds: meanwhile, information minister said that the government has formulated its new advertisement policy and the next Wage Board will be announced within two months.

He was talking to the journalists who staged a walk-out from the Press Gallery while covering the National Assembly Session here on Tuesday.

He said the federal and the Punjab governments had recently made millions of rupees of payments to clear the pending payments of various media houses to secure the jobs of media workers.

Earlier, the protesting journalists informed the information minister about dismissals of their colleagues from various media-houses and non-payment of their dues.