Daily Times

ISLAMABAD: The presence of dozens of ghost employees, including the Station Director and six lady staff members at the Sargodha station of Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (Radio Pakistan), has been revealed.

Sources told Daily Times that panic was seen among the top bosses of PBC after the publication of a news item in Daily Times about ghost employees working in radio stations across the country that were recruited against heavy salary packages. After the publication of the news about ghost employees, the PM’s house had also sought a report from the secretary information in this regard.

“As many as 42 ghost employees were working in Radio Station Sargodha and they included six women and one and half dozen other employees who never visited the office. The ghost employees include Naseem Kausar, Naila Nazir, Farah Tabassum, Saeeda Ahmed, Adnan, Ilyas, Bilal Mirza, Usman, Maula Buksh, some guest producers and resource persons,” sources added.

Sources further told this scribe that Station Director Riaz Malsy, who never visited Radio Station Sargodha even for a single day for the last three years was enjoying life in his native town Multan and was regularly receiving his salary every month.

Sources maintained that Riaz Malsy had been deputed as Station Director at Radio Station Sargodha for the last three years with the backing of top officials at the headquarters of Radio Pakistan and he conferred all his powers to Malik Ghulam Abbas, senior producer.

Meanwhile, Shahnawaz Ranjha, Federal Parliamentary Secretary for Information and Broadcasting had worked out the recruitment of a large number of people in Radio Pakistan and PTV while utilising his political influence and some of his personal servants working at his political secretariat located in his native place were getting salaries from Radio Pakistan.

Sources added that the average salary of a Resource Person is between Rs 20,000 to Rs 40,000 per month. The transmission schedule of FM-101 Sargodha is approximately 12 hours but due to non-availability of a generator facility for the last five years and power load shedding, the duration of transmission was confined to six hours.

“The headquarter of Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) has been continuously and regularly informing about the non-availability of the generator and affected schedule of programmes but the administration of PBC’s headquarter has not initiated adequate and effective measures in this regard”, sources said and maintained that if top officials of the Information Ministry did not pay attention towards it then Radio Station Sargodha would be blocked.

Daily Times contacted the spokesperson and Director Media of the PBC, Abdul Rauf, and he expressed his ignorance in this regard adding that the DG, Radio Pakistan was abroad and “I would be able to comment on the prevailing situation after consulting with the DG when he returns,” he concluded.