LAHORE: A meeting of journalists and law experts was held here on Saturday to discuss issues especially those related to law.

On the basis of some of the work done by legal experts and the development sector, issues faced by the journalists were first studied and a model ‘contract’ was drafted.

The Solidarity Center and the Civic Action Resources organised the meeting and recommended that the journalists should send their feedback after thinking about what other issues they faced so that these could be incorporated in their draft and a way forward could be thought of.

Lawyer Asad Jamal said there were some major issues of the Newspapers Employees Act of 1973. Apart from this, electronic media had various problems especially those of security and absence of laws regarding their working conditions.

Also third party contracts were becoming more and more common. This was recommended to be terminated as a law.

“The main problem is that the laws regarding journalists are all piece meal and scattered. What we intend to do is to at least draft one legal framework under which all such laws pertaining to journalists – both print and electronic – are included,” he said.

“There is also the issue of the 18th amendment where the devolution has still not been completed and there are many loopholes regarding this. For example, the EOBI for a working journalist is a confusing issue especially if the journalist has switched provinces.”

He said there was also a problem in the implementation mechanisms. The Wage Board had implementation mechanisms but these were rarely implemented. “A lack of implementation is usually because of political matters, not judicial issues,” he said.

Some journalists said safety was of equal importance across the media. The district correspondents are ignored despite having little security. Similarly, they said, there should be uniform pay scale according to designation.

The issue of a lack of unity in journalists was also highlighted.

Aftab Jadhran said there should be a clear definition of a journalist. “We are professionals and if this definition is not agreed upon, how can we expect to work on laws,” he said.

At the meeting a study by the organisations on working conditions of women journalists was distributed which revealed some worrying figures. “More than one third of women are deprived of memberships of local press clubs. Around 80pc of women say they are not paid overtime for working after duty hours, while only 18pc that work in elite media houses have medical insurance facility available to them.”

About 51pc say their organisations are not mindful of special needs of women journalists. The most serious digital security threat faced by women journalists pertains to their emails (55pc). A majority (62pc) of women journalists say they are not aware of the major legislations that protect them from harassment.

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2017