ISLAMABAD, March 11: Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said in the National Assembly on Thursday that he hoped the issue of government advertisements for the Nawa-i-Waqt group would be resolved soon.

He said the government had issued advertisements worth over Rs370 million to the Nawa-i-Waqt Group in the year 2000, Rs490 million in 2001 and Rs530 million in 2002. In the month of February 2004, the group was paid over Rs1.7 million for the advertisements.

The minister denied that advertisements to the newspaper stopped on the directives of any military general. "I am responsible for all this and I will correct the situation," he added.

Sheikh Rashid also said the government was considering to establish a close link between the quantum of government advertisements released to newspapers and the extent of progress made by these newspapers implementation the wage board award.

The minister was speaking in response to a call attention notice moved jointly by PPP MNAs Syed Naveed Qamar, Raja Pervez Ashraf, Syed Khursheed Shah and Sherry Rehman and PML-N's Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan regarding "the ban of government advertisements for the Nawa-i-Waqt Group" here on Thursday.

The minister said that the government had been paying billions of rupees to newspapers on account of advertisements, but employees were not being paid salaries according to the wage board award.

He said the government had adopted a policy under which it was releasing 25 per cent of its total advertisements to small and regional newspapers, which would have little effect on the ad revenue of major newspapers.

He said the linking of advertisements' release with the implementation of wage board award would compel newspaper owners to pay good wages to their employees.