The government, newspaper owners and the journalist organisations all should recognise their inability so far in fulfilling their respective responsibilities to upgrade working conditions and salary structures in the profession. It is very unfortunate that more than two third of the Pakistani journalists are deprived off salaries, allowances and other fringe benefits that wage board awards officially promise to render them.

Six wage boards have declared their awards for the last forty years after triumph of the journalist organisations. Yet only one-third journalists are their beneficiaries. The responsibility and failure lie with the government, newspaper owners and the journalists themselves.

The government allocates advertisement quota worth billion of rupees annually to the newspapers and it can pressurise owners for implementation of media labour laws. One such way is to equate the quotas with wage board awards. Likewise the Newspapers Employees Act also empowers the government to appoint labour inspectors and to monitor effective observance of laws. But nothing has been done to that end. Only an Implementation Tribunal is constituted for this purpose; that too for whole of the country.

While about four hundred and fifty newspapers are currently published on daily basis in the country, they do not observe the award laws and its implementation is an exceptional instance here.

Whenever affected journalists and newspaper workers register their complaints, it takes sometimes years to get verdict because a single tribunal cannot practically address these numerous grievances even if an intention is there principally. It is required that the tribunal should be constituted on provincial levels. Since Punjab covers the biggest populace and five major newspaper producing centres – , Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Multan and Bahawalpur – a minimum of two tribunals should be established there.

The newspaper owners should uphold the second most important responsibility in this regard. Though their representatives form part of the Wage Board and participate in its preparation a majority of them are not willing to entertain these awards. Rather, they frequently challenge these awards before High and Supreme Courts and are defeated in each such instance.

Malik's survey report also mentions rural journalists that, in fact, are district correspondents. Majority of them originally comes from the newspaper agent, seller, teacher, lawyers, shopkeeper and student communities, etc. Under PFUJ constitution, they do not qualify for membership because just those journalists are entitled whose only means of living is journalism.

There are many newspapers now even at the district levels. Wage Board Award has also fixed separate pay scales and allowances for journalists and workers of these regional newspapers under a regional category. But these publications do not pay according to the rules, nor implement the awards.

Pays and working conditions of the journalists cannot improve until the shameful contract system is prevalent within newspapers; people are recruited through associated organisations on paltry wages; and they are not decorated with appointment letters under the media law.

Most of the mal-practices and terms like Lifafa journalism can also be best attributed to lower wages of the journalists. If they are granted with good amount of wages, such shameful, lamentable and hideous practices can be eliminated which defy any sense of honour.

As far as yellow journalism and blackmailing are concerned, these can be related with the owners who are proprietors and the non-professional editors of their respective newspapers. They are more likely to encourage dark practices and let their staff loose against any moral and professional standards. Though the affected parties have rights to libel against such people, legally, but majority of them avoids court disputes and let them prey to tactics of yellow journalism and blackmailing.

It is a need of the hour that the government, newspaper owners and journalist organisations should collectively improve working conditions of the journalists and also facilitate the implementation of the wage board awards. Tripartite meetings at the official level can be a way out.

I H Rashid
President, Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists

A journalist has to face persistent tension, pressure, undue interference and influences, difficulties and hardships while performing his duties, and this makes journalistic profession a desert blazing one under hell-hot summer sun. Like an old proverb wearer knows where the shoe pinches, nobody knows better than journalists do what a difficult task is to write truth or to dig out facts. Yet some might term journalism a glamourous profession but those who are practitioners view that the people working in this attractive profession are living on highly unattractive salaries. Their wages do not match with the ever-increasing prices. It would not be wrong if one describes financial affairs of this community in these words: "prices are sky rocketing, while increase in the wages are being done at snail's pace."

Even in such circumstances, a man named Tahir Malik speaks the truth, writes facts and talks of revolution based on economic and social equality. He is an innocent beauty who tends to forget that progressive thinking and conversation which he normally does, would be regarded as a 'sinful act' in the local environ.
I advised him over and again that whatever you say is not practicable in this society so better keep silent but, perhaps, wily Tahir never takes me seriously. He is determined to do what he thinks right and he says what he believes in.
Through this report, he has painstakingly gathered some hard and bitter facts about his professional community. Some of these facts are so very painful that one sees only a question mark on the future, character personality of this community. Tahir Malik, who speaks about revolution, is turning out to be a revolutionary as the time goes ahead. His latest accomplishment of this survey and book is true enough of the proof of the fact that he has the courage to unveil faces of the powers that be in this profession, when they talk of fundamental rights, human respect and integrity. My hat is off to Tahir Malik for doing such a difficult and tedious job.

Well done boy and keep it up!

Badar Munir Chaudhry
President, Press Club