ISLAMABAD: The federal government on Wednesday initiated a dialogue with the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) on a 19-point charter of demands earlier presented to it by the union.

The first preliminary round of talks held on Zoom was chaired by Information Secretary Shaheera Shahid.

The PFUJ was led by its Secretary General Nasir Zaidi, who was assisted by Federal Executive Council members Afzal Butt, Nasir Malick and Mubarak Zeb Khan.

The PFUJ secretary general thanked the federal secretary for initiating the talks to sort out issues facing the media industry, particularly journalists and media industry workers.

Mr Zaidi said a large number of television channels were not paying salaries to their employees regularly while others had imposed cuts on the salaries of their employees.

The information secretary agreed and informed the meeting that the employers had given affidavits to the government to clear the dues of their workers immediately after receiving their advertisement arrears but they failed to fulfil their promise.

There were a number of demands like early vaccination of media workers by treating them as frontline workers which can be fulfilled by the ministry itself with the coordination of other ministries, she said.

She asked the PFUJ to provide a list of the frontline workers within a week to enable the ministry to take up the issue with the health ministry.

It was decided that at the next meeting, the charter of demands would be prioritised and issues like the implementation of the wage award and minimum wages in regional newspapers would be taken up first.

The meeting also decided that at a later stage other stakeholders would also be invited to these talks.

Published in Dawn, April 8th, 2021