Federal Information Minister Fawad Chaudhry Monday said Prime Minister Imran Khan had issued directives for immediate release of outstanding dues of all the media houses. In a video statement here, the minister said the decision would have positive impact on the media industry and would help stop sacking of employees by owners of the media houses. “In the past few weeks, the government observed that people were being sacked from various media houses. The PTI government is committed to providing livelihood to people and this decision will serve as an instant relief measure,” he said, adding that the federal and the provincial governments have been directed to start the process of reimbursing media houses with immediate effect. He said the previous regimes used advertisements as a political tool but the present government had no such intention. A merit-based policy was being formulated to end the government control over release of official advertisements, he said. “Similar to how the incumbent government has abolished censorship in state-run media, it is taking measures to limit and eventually end government control over media advertisements,” he said. Fawad said the steps of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government badly affected the media industry, adding that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) was against using advertisements for political gains. Later talking to Daily Times, Federal Information Secretary Shafqat Jalil revealed that an amount of Rs 1.2 billion was pending against newspaper advertisements while another Rs 1.1 billion against TV channels, which would be cleared in a phase-wise manner. Published in Daily Times, November 13th 2018.