KARACHI, May 26: The newly-constituted board of directors of the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation has more ex officio members than the officials of Radio Pakistan.

Sources told Dawn on Monday that the board of directors, constituted on May 6, would now have the following ex officio members: additional secretary of the finance ministry, additional secretary of the foreign affairs ministry, additional secretary of the interior ministry, director general of the Inter-Services Public Relations, managing director of Pakistan Television, director general of the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation; Mobarak Shah, former director general of the external publicity wing of the ministry of information and media development; Mufti Jamiluddin, former director general of Associated Press of Pakistan; M.Y. Sethi, former principal information officer of the Press Information Department; and Bashir Baloch, former director of programmes at the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation. They added that as before the board of directors would be headed by a chairman who was always the secretary of the ministry of information and media development.

The sources said that the posts of director finance, director administration, director engineering, director news and director programmes had been renamed as executive finance, executive administration, executive engineering, executive news and executive programmes, respectively. They added that these officials would implement the decisions taken by the board of directors.

Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation officials maintain that the presence of so many ex officio members in the board of directors, who had no radio background, would adversely affect the working of the corporation.

The former director programmes at the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation, Kalimullah, said that the inclusion of a large number of ex officio members in the board of directors was an unprecedented move. He said previously there used to be five directors on the board representing the programmes, engineering, news, administration and public affairs departments of the Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation.

Other officials insist that being essentially a cultural department, Radio Pakistan should be run by those who have the relevant working background.