PFUJ castigates management for closure of The Post |
ISLAMABAD, Nov 15 : The Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists on Monday condemned the management of Khabrain Group of Publications for abruptly stopping publication of its English newspaper "The Post", Lahore and termed it an anti-worker act especially on the eve of Eidul Azha. According to the reports, the Post started its publications in 2005, and the group had hired staff offering good salaries, but now all of a sudden the management has unilaterally announced to close down its publications rendering almost 85 employees jobless. According to sacked media persons, the closure of the newspaper subsequently termination of employees have nothing to do with competition with other newspapers, but actually Mr Zia Shhahid was in no mood to invest more money in either of his newspapers or channel. The PFUJ termed this act of the Management of Khabrain Group of Publications as illegal lock out and contended that this arbitrary and un called for act is shocking for the media community as a number of other newspapers, journals and channels have not only drastically curtailed staff but have also reduced their wages. Others have simply locked out. It pointed out that the Management of Khabrain Group of Publications had dodged the staff of "The Post". They were first hired after offering attractive salaries while they had already been working in certain established newspapers, but with the passage of time, the management started curtailing their salaries and removing them. While journalists were removed, their salaries were curtailed on the pretext of non-availability of resources to pay salaries fixed earlier in the job letter. This had initially triggered resignations followed by sacking and lastly salary cuts. To make matters worse, the Khabrain Group of Publications Management started paying salaries to staff after 60 to 90 days, then after four months and finally paying them half salaries. The same was the case with Daily Khabrain and Channel-5, the PFUJ added. The current situation in which a number of employees have been abruptly removed without prior notices, and when payment of legitimate dues is not being made, has caused a lot of bitterness and resentment among media persons. The PFUJ has asked the government to take notice of the situation in which media persons were being treated as a tissue paper, and they were being removed from services against all norms, rules, regulations, labour laws, with impunity. The PFUJ said it is high time that the federal government and the international community take notice of such a sorry state of affairs of Pakistani media persons as termination of media persons during the last three years had become order of the day and more than 800 newspaper related employees have already been removed from their services without following any lawful procedure.
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