PESHAWAR, Sept 24: Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli has said that the government is planning to launch four separate channels of Pakistan Television to facilitate promotion of regional languages and cultures.

Talking to newsmen at a luncheon, which she hosted in their honour at a hotel on Saturday, the minister said the proposed channels — Abaseen, Panjnad, Mehran and Bolan — would be a part of the PTV, but they would have more time for the coverage of socio-political and cultural activities in their regional languages. She said promotion of regional languages would strengthen the cause of rural development and good governance in the provinces.

She said the government wanted to decentralise the PTV so that its four wings (provincial stations) could explore more venues of development and progress.

Referring to the demand made by the people of remote areas, she said the government had so far installed six boosters across the NWFP to extend the telecast service of the PTV to remote and hilly areas of the province. She said the PTV had a wider and effective range of telecast and it was trying to reach the hidden and far flung areas of the country. Ms Tahirkheli said that it was an age of media that had opened up the societies and bridged the gap between them.

Replying to another question, she said the cabinet division was dealing with the Pemra affairs and it was no more a wing of the ministry of information and broadcasting. She dispelled the impression that the Pemra had evolved a set of draconian regulations, which were opposed to the freedom of press and a violation of privacy.

She reiterated that the government was trying to implement the 7th Wage Award in the newspaper establishments, but, there were some hurdles which hampered its early implementation. She denied that the government was backing the newspaper owners against the demands of working journalists and newspaper employees. She said high-power parliamentary committee had been deputed with the task of the wage award’s implementation.

She agreed that the establishment of an independent television commission being a watchdog was necessary to regulate the affairs of electronic media.

She said that genuine working journalists would be enlisted into the allotments of plots in housing schemes being developed in Islamabad.

The minister agreed that journalists from all the four provinces should be accommodated, in accordance with their population quota, into the new housing schemes.