LAHORE, Oct 30: Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali has directed the provincial chief ministers to prepare legislation to end the piracy of books in the country.

Mr Jamali made this statement while appreciating the concern of the Oxford University Press (OUP) regarding piracy of books at the launch of OUP publications South Asia: A Historical Narrative by former ambassador Muhammad Yunus and Aradhana Parmar and Foreign Policy: A Theoretical Introduction by Muhammad Yunus, at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) on Thursday.

The Punjab governor, Lt-Gen Khalid Maqbool (Retired), and Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi were present on the occasion.

The PM said the government had doubled the education budget this year and planned to liberalize the rules to offer a better salary package to the public sector faculty in the next budget. “I know that the faculty in private sector educational institutions are getting handsome salaries besides perks while those in the public sector are living with very low salaries.”

He however regretted that in the past even those people continued to get jobs of primary schoolteachers who failed to get any other job. Terming these appointments as “political murder of education”, he said the employers did not realize that appointments of such teachers eroded the foundation of students.

In Pakistan, Mr Jamali said the government wanted to touch the real issues. Saying that there had been enough of everything, he added that the government must not make the people wait but take practical steps on the spot.

The PM said he had not read the books being launched and therefore could not comment on them. He however said that the writings of Muhammad Yunus were worthwhile. He also said that the scholars must write from practical experience. “There is no better teacher than experience.”

Earlier, OUP managing director Ameena Saiyid highlighted the various issues being faced by publishers including piracy of books and monopoly of the provincial textbook boards over state schools’ market in the country.

She said the bonafide publishers were suffering enormously due to piracy of their books. She said the OUP invested heavily in each book besides paying royalties to the authors and remuneration to the editors, proofreaders, designers and illustrators. “When a title is established in the market, and demand has been created for it, the pirate moves in conveniently and produces fake editions with no investment in research and development.”

Ms Saiyid said the laws ensuring Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) were weak in Pakistan and their enforcement even weaker. She urged the PM to strengthen the IPR laws in Pakistan by introducing a minimum punishment and by making an infringement on IPRs a non-bailable and cognizable offence.

Author Muhammad Yunus, LUMS pro-chancellor Syed Babar Ali, vice-chancellor Dr Syed Zahoor Hasan and social sciences department head Dr Rasul Bakhsh Rais also spoke on the occasion.