ISLAMABAD – April 15, 2022: The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) has urged Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to play a priority role, in line with his commitment at his inaugural speech in the National Assembly as the new premier, in resolving the myriad of problems being faced by the journalists’ fraternity.
In a statement issued on Friday, PFUJ’s President Shahzada Zulfiqar and Secretary General Nasir Zaidi urged the newly elected government under Shehbaz Sharif to take concrete measures for the revival of media industry, which is floundering due to the vindictive policies of the Imran Khan government, which massively manipulated various laws and regulations for gagging media and suppress freedom of expression and freedom of the press.
“Coercive censorship, persistent press advices, draconian proposals like Pakistan Media Development Authority (PMDA) and mala fide provisions like Section 6 of the Federal Journalists’ Protection Bill are examples of how the Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf government continued to conspire against the democratic and media freedoms,” they said.
“Constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and right to information are supreme and have overriding effect over all laws, therefore, the PFUJ demands immediate reversal of the PTI policies of intimidation, and to undo all mala fide provisions in all media-related laws and regulations,” the PFUJ leadership demanded.
Zulfiqar and Zaidi said under the PTI regime, journalists and other media workers across Pakistan faced retrenchments, pay cuts, growing salary arrears, wage board violations, an intimidating media policy environment and a deliberate contracting of the media economy.
“The previous government, which lost a vote of no-confidence, withheld advertisements of a number of media outlets forcing the media houses to either retrench workers, force out journalists or substantially reduce their salaries and emoluments. The pandemic added financial hardships of media houses prompting them to make late payments to their workers or close offices or bureaus altogether without paying dues to media employees,” the PFUJ leaders said.
Resultantly, they added, massive unemployment among media persons have not only rendered them financially desperate, quit journalism and become vendors, and some even forced into tragic suicides, but also majorly impacted media freedoms and quality of democracy.
“Taking advantage of the situation, the media houses did not implement the 8th Wage Board Award besides refusing to make pending payments with the result that thousands of media workers have not been paid their dues for years – this situation must change if the journalists, journalism and democracy have to be saved,” they said. “All pending payments to media houses, including those audited under the previous Pakistan Muslim League-N government must be released immediately,” they added.
“We call upon Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to urgently convene a meeting of representative associations of media owners, media managers and media workers, as well as the relevant government departments to sort out the adverse issues being faced by the industry,” Zulfiqar and Zaidi said.
“We also urge that all payments in lieu of government advertisements be made with the caveat that the media owners will clear all dues of media workers, restore perks and privileges of media employees, withdraw the pay cuts and extend all facilities to media employees including the right to form unions,” the PFUJ leadership added.
Zulfiqar and Zaidi hoped that their demands would be considered by the government on a priority basis and result in immediate concrete steps to address the problems being faced by all media workers. They added that their 18-point charter of demands, pending with Ministry of Information and Broadcasting should be the starting point of a mutually beneficial dialogue between the media industry and the government.
