MULTAN, July 20: The chairman of the Implementation Tribunal for Newspapers Employees (ITNE), Justice Javed Nawaz Gandapur (retired) has observed that the Seventh Wage Board Award for the Newspapers Employees is applicable to the contract employees as well.

He was speaking at a press conference at the Multan Press Club on Saturday.

The Tribunal chairman said that setting up of fake firms by some of the newspaper owners to evade implementation of the Wage Award was illegal.

He said his duty was to implement the Seventh Wage Board Award for the newspapers employees. He said he has helped recover dues of hundreds of newspaper industry workers in Peshawar, Islamabad, Lahore and Karachi.

Justice Gandapur (retired) said the newspaper industry can not be compared with any other industry. He said the government does not give advertisements to any industry like newspapers or other benefits like relief in customs duty on newsprint or plots for setting up offices at subsidised rates etc.

He said that the owners and employees were two wheels of the chariot of newspaper industry. Both ought to be satisfied but justifiably.

The former judge of the Peshawar High Court said that the government gives advertisements worth billions of rupees to the newspapers per annum whereas the Seventh Wage Award costs just a few crore rupees.

He urged the newspapers employees that whether they “are regular employees or on contract they should approach him for redress and he is bound under the law to provide them succour.”

The ITNE chairman also urged the newspaper owners to implement the Seventh Wage Board Award because, honestly speaking, they were earning reasonable profits from their papers.

The former judge of the PHC said that he had recommended a number of steps to empower the ITNE chairman to take action against those newspapers who were evading implementation of the award. These recommendations included powers to stop government advertisements, suspension of declaration, issuance of arrest warrants and attachment of property.—APP