PML(N) stalwart Senator Irfan Siddiqui has, once again, sensitized the authorities concerned to take urgent practical measures to save the country’s premier media organization – Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC), popularly known as Radio Pakistan. Making a strong case for the institution during his speech in the upper house on Monday, he urged the Government to move quickly to resolve the financial crisis of this national institution as senior citizens are on roads to protest non-payment of their pensions for the last three months while salaries for two months are also pending.
The sanity demands the Government should review its overall thinking and approach towards Radio Pakistan following a fact-based statement of Irfan Siddiqui that should serve as an eye-opener for the relevant policy and decision-makers. He rightly pointed out that nowhere in the world Radio is considered as a commercial entity as was misfed to the Minister for Finance, who told a questioner during his post-budget press conference that Radio being a commercial entity should generate its own resources to pay pensions. Irfan Siddiqui aptly pointed out that Radio Pakistan is a public service institution and not a money-making enterprise like PIA or Pakistan Steel, adding that even the role-model British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) receives funding from the state and collects a license fee. Radio Pakistan too used to collect license fee, which formed 20% of its revenues at the time when it was abolished by the very PML(N) Government on the plea that it was responsibility of the Government to provide resources to the statutory corporation. The attempt to run away from the governmental responsibility to provide necessary funding to PBC is also belied by the fact that ever since the creation of Pakistan, Radio Pakistan has been receiving grants-in-aid from the Government. Pension scheme in PBC is not an illegality as it was duly got approved from the federal government before its enforcement and therefore, it is 100% responsibility of the Government to pay for pensions as it does in the case of other employees of the federal government.
