12 April 2005	Tuesday	02 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1426

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ISLAMABAD, April 11: Participants of a seminar on Monday agreed that proposed amendments to the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority’s ordinance should be discussed in depth before submitting them to the parliament for approval. The seminar on “Proposed Pemra Amendments and their Impact on Electronic Media” was organized by the Sustainable Development Policy Institute as part of its weekly discussion.

It is worth mentioning here that the National Assembly Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting has already agreed to the proposed amendments.

However, the proposals have not been discussed at any forum, and stakeholders — cable operators and broadcasters — are criticizing the government for not taking them on board.

Justifying the amendments, Pemra legal consultant Ali Jaffar said the original ordinance had a number of anomalies that needed to be rectified.

However, he said, the basic objective behind the amendments was to follow the federal cabinet’s decision which it took in July, 2003 to allow cross-media ownership, which earlier was not granted under the ordinance.

“There are a number of provisions in the Pemra ordinance that do not have any meaning besides typographical and grammatical mistakes, and, therefore, are needed to be rectified,” Mr Jaffar added.

Originally, the cross-media ownership was banned to ensure diversity and pluralism in the electronic media and to counter monopoly of the print media on the former.

However, since the federal cabinet has decided to allow the cross-media ownership, “we have no other option but to amend the original ordinance,” he said.

Similarly, to make the authority more effective, these amendments are of critical importance.

“At present, the authority, can only cancel licence, and lacks the mechanism to address the grievances of licence holders. Whereas, according to the proposed amendments, a council of complaints will be set up within Pemra to act as a buffer zone between the authority and the broadcasters,” he added.

Moreover, the problem of illegal operators, which run into thousands, is gigantic and cannot be controlled within the present framework of the authority, Mr Jaffar said.

He said only after Pemra’s complaints, police would be allowed to arrest a licence holder. He said the proposed amendments were yet to be discussed in the parliament, before their final approval, and could be amended if required.

Speaking on the occasion, Pakistan Cable Operators Association General-Secretary Imran Nadeem said: “To me, the biggest problem is the illegal cable operators, and the authority should take notice of them. Also, we can only request that before taking any decisions, if the government can take us along, it will be good for this industry,” he said.