A legislative body of the Upper house of parliament on Monday expressed its serious concern over the government’s new advertisement policy and sought to stop its finalisation until the committee forwarded its recommendations. Even PTI Senator Faisal Javed, who chaired the Senate’s Standing Committee on Information Broadcasting and National Heritage, was of the view that he was not impressed with the new draft advertisement policy in which the role of advertisement agencies were totally eliminated. The chairman of the committee suggested the Ministry of Information to create a job portal in Press Information Department website so that unemployed youth unemployed could search for respective jobs over there. Senator Robina Khalid was of the view that the world was going towards more specialization. While in Pakistan, the government was planning to merge all media-related departments, including PEMRA, into a single entity. “Creativity has already been stopped in the media industry and if all departments are merged then it will destroy the media sector,” she said. Senator Mushtaq Ahmad was of the view that any policy made against the interest of media workers would create uncertainty. Currently, he regretted that all press clubs across the country were protesting layoffs by and delayed salaries. The information secretary told the committee that advertisement expenses stood at Rs 86 billion last year and this year it stood at Rs 81.6 billion. “There was only a slight reduction in government advertisement.” He said that advertisement agencies had no role between the government and the department, which was giving advertisement. The secretary said that the advertisement agencies were just making money and in fact there was no creativity on the ground. He claimed that the current advertisement criteria were also not based on justice. He claimed that under the new draft policy of the government advertisement agencies had been curtailed to zero. Chairman Faisal Javed directed the secretary not to implement the new policy abruptly and take input from the committee. The committee also took-up and discussed the matter of point of public importance raised by Senator Abdul Rehman Malik regarding the alleged character assassination of the PPP leaders on electronic media. Senator Rehman Malik was of the view that there were clear instructions of SC that all those cases should not be discussed in the media whose investigations were in progress in any court. “Such types of cases should also not be discussed in media but regretted that leaders of the PPP were always confronting media trials in cases which yet to be finalised.” He said that the PEMRA was given a list of few TV programmes to present to the committee but it could not. The secretary informed the committee that under the new law the ministry would establish a tribunal to deal with such cases. He said that the NEPRA had issued notices to 26 private channels over alleged violation of rules. Published in Daily Times, January 8th 2019