ISLAMABAD, July 1 (APP): Federal Secretary Ministry of
Information, Broadcasting and National Heritage Syed Imran Gardezi
said all issues related to journalists community would be resolved on priority basis.
He was talking to a delegation of Rawalpindi Islamabad Union
of Journalists (RIUJ) led by its President Ali Raza Alvi along with Secretary General Bilal Dar and other members here Friday.
The Secretary assured office bearers of RIUJ that the ministry
would work with the journalists’ community to help resolve their issues.
Matters pertaining to payment of salaries to employees of BOL
TV Channel, Wage Board Award, payment of salaries to media workers
and other issues related to the journalist community were discussed in the meeting.
The Federal Secretary assured the delegation that the
government was with the media workers and wanted the issue of payment of employees of BOL Channel to be resolved at the earliest.
In this connection Secretary Information constituted a
Committee comprising Press Information Officer, PID, President and
Secretary General of RIUJ and Director (Media) Ministry of Information, to review the situation, agree on mechanism to ensure early payment of not only to BOL’s employees but also to the workers of other newspapers and news channels.
He said that all necessary measures would be taken to ensure
timely payment of salaries to all media workers. The Secretary said that the committee should take up the matter with the owners of media houses for immediate payment of outstanding dues to workers of all newspapers and news channels.
Issues being faced by the newspapers published from Gilgit
Baltistan also came under discussion in the meeting.
The delegation apprised the Secretary that the GB Government
was reluctant to release long outstanding dues on account of advertisement and due to this factor the journalists were not being paid.
The secretary assured the delegation that Federal Government
would take up the matter with the Government of Gilgit Baltistan to resolve the issue amicably.
The secretary also framed a committee comprising one each
representative of the ministry, PID, representative of the GB government and President and Secretary General of RIUJ to resolve the issue of payment to newspapers from GB.
The office bearers of RIUJ agreed with the Secretary on
setting up mechanisms to discuss and resolve the issues being faced by the media workers. The RIUJ also agreed to call off the protests scheduled for tomorrow in Islamabad.
The meeting was also attended by Deputy Commissioner Islamabad
and senior officers of the Ministry.
