SPECIAL Assistant to the Prime Minister on Information Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan on Thursday launched the draft advertisement policy and announced bringing reforms to the Press Information Department (PID) to tackle corruption and mismanagement in the grant of government advertisements. Addressing a ceremony, she said, “The reforms in the PID and the draft advertisement policy will eventually help media workers who were facing financial hardship due to non-payment” of salaries and dues.
It is a welcome development that instead of acting unilaterally, the Government has decided to involve all stakeholders to get their input before finalizing the advertisement policy. The draft is being shared with stakeholders, including the Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists, All Pakistan Newspapers Society, Council of Pakistan Newspaper Editors and Pakistan Broadcasters Association and hopefully their input would help the policy fair and transparent. The Special Assistant talked about reforms in the PID included automation and digitization of the system to reduce human interaction and contain the misuse of power by the officials in the grant of advertisements. She expressed the confidence that the reforms would also help in issuing merit-based advertisements to regional media. We do hope that the new policy would take care of issues and difficulties of small and regional media that are faced with the question of survival because of lopsided competition for government advertisements. Fairness in distribution of ads has become all the more important in view of mushroom growth of electronic media and increasing power of the social media, which has put extra-strains on all newspapers but especially the smaller ones. The federal and provincial governments should also clear dues of small media houses on a priority basis in view of their pressing needs.
