Shahzada Zulfiqar elected PFUJ president

KARACHI: Shahzada Zulfiqar and Nasir Zaidi got elected as the president and secretary-general respectively of Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists for a term of two years in elections held on Saturday.

Zulfiqar is a recipient of the President’s Award for Pride of Performance — the first journalist from Balochistan to receive the distinction. He was previously associated with Dawn, The Nation, and Samaa, and has over three decades of experience in journalism.

Zaidi is also veteran journalist and a press freedom activist. He was one of four journalists jailed and flogged in 1978 during the Zia era for protesting the closure of Musawaat newspaper.

Initial reports from Karachi said that Lala Asad Pathan, Saleem Shahid, Bakhatzada Yousafzai, and Rana Pervaiz Hameed were elected as the vice presidents of PFUJ.

Others elected were: Zulfiqar Metho (treasurer), and Khalid Khokher, Hamid Yasin, Eisa Tareen, and Shahid Ch (assistant secretaries-general).

The following are the elected members of the Federal Executive Council: Abdul Rauf, Adil Akram, Afzal Butt, Ayub Jan Sarhandi, Wastar Shah, Imdad Buzdar, Ibrahim Khan, Saeed Akhtar, Zaheer Shahzad, Shabbir Mughal, Makhdoom Bilal, Khursheed Abbasi, Lal Rehman, Amin Abbasi, Nasir Hussain, Shafeeq Raja, Zaheer Khan Lodhi, Ihsan ul Haq, Nurul Amin, Javed Siddiqui, Banaras Khan, Habib Rehman, Mubarak Zeb, Javed Iqbal, and M. Akram Nasir.