ISLAMABAD, Nov 8: The government is facing an insurmountable challenge to turn around things in Pakistan Television (PTV), as the financial health of the national channel has gone from bad to worse over preceding months.

A top official of the information ministry has termed the situation ‘grave’ and called for major surgical operation to put its house in order which under the present circumstances seemed impossible.

A number of political appointments have been made by the present government on special grades with hefty salary packages. Whereas, the quality of PTV’s programmes, be it news and current affairs or entertainment are not at par with its traditions. The official did not mention the exact amount of losses.

In a recently-held meeting of the subcommittee of the Senate Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting, it was revealed that the channel had failed to recover more than Rs1 billion from scores of advertisement agencies.

This is not only adding to its already poor financial health, but also stopping the administration to take new initiatives to improve the quality of its production.

According to documents available with Dawn, scores of advertisement agencies owned by influential people are amongst its defaulters, hence, making its recovery process difficult. Despite regular recommendations by the Senate committee to come hard on PTV’s debtor, its management had failed to act.

PTV’s Central Sales, Karachi, has declared 31 such agencies dormant which owe Rs42 million to the national channel.

The sales office is in litigation with 15 advertisement agencies, and according to record they in total have defaulted Rs52 million.

Five such agencies, which have to pay Rs141 million to the PTV, have gone into arbitration, whereas 10 agencies have bought time to pay Rs119 million they owe to the channel.

However, according to knowledgeable sources, with the political government at the helm of affairs, the recovery process has slowed down further. Every time, PTV’s management tries to come hard on the defaulters, they find some connection in the power corridors and easily get off the hook.

At present, the PTV administration is left with no choice but to get its defaulted money back, otherwise, it would become another public sector organisation which needs regular government financial injections to run its operations.

Recently resolved confrontation between its outgoing Managing Director Dr Shahid Masood and Information Minister Sherry Rehman further added to its mismanagement.