ONCE while visiting Malaysia I saw how radio, TV and road signs were used to educate the public about good manners, how to use elevators, how to avoid taxi high rates scams, etc.

In Pakistan, the government in the 1980s and 1990s used to regularly run advertisements to educate the public using examples of our Holy Prophet (peace be upon him) and verses from the Holy Quran.

Now with so many TV channels working in Pakistan, the government should start a scheme whereby the government will pay a fixed rate per month for one year to a media company. The company will create 10 or more positive messages.

Once approved by the government, the company should run those messages every day whenever it has free space or time.

This way the government will be able to provide a regular income to the media without the need for self-promotional advertisements while also educating the public easily. The government should also run a competition where the three best messages in newspapers, TV, radio and social media should be awarded with some incentives each year to increase competition and quality of messages and attract individual designers/students to participate through the social media category.

Shahryar Khan
Peshawar

Published in Dawn, April 24th, 2020