KP journalists threaten to stage protest against PDA

PESHAWAR: The Peshawar-based journalists would stage a protest sit-in outside the Peshawar Development Authority (PDA) office for its failure to launch uplift work in the lone media colony despite payment to the entity.

“The PDA has been applying delaying tactics since long despite receiving payments for the development work in the media colony. We have no other option but to go to any extent to snatch our rights, Imran Yousafzai, the general secretary of the Peshawar Press Club told an emergency meeting held here on Thursday. A large number of media persons including senior journalists and allottees of the media colony attended the meeting.

Expressing anguish and anger over the pathetic attitude of the PDA authorities, the journalists said that they had paid dues to the entity for the development work including provision of electricity, gas, water supply but now it was not ready to fulfill its responsibility. The general secretary said that most of the journalists had paid fees to the PDA for taking possession of the respective plots but a mafia was active and creating hurdles in the process.

He alleged that certain elements at the PDA offices were patronizing land-grabbers that was why they did not allow honest officials to carry out uplift work at the media colony so they could buy plots from the journalists at a throw away price.

“We are now compelled to come to the roads against the rampant corruption, nepotism and red-tap in the PDA,” the journalists vowed. Setting a three-day deadline to the PDA for the supply of electricity, gas, water and provision of other facilities, they said they would follow ‘now or never’ policy to push the entity for prompt action.

The journalists would stage a protest outside the PDA offices in Hayatabad on August 24 if it did not launch work in the stipulated time. They also decided that a protest sit-in would also be launched outside the PDA offices and would continue until the uplift work completed.