Islamabad
Pakistan Television Corporation (PTV) has sacked eight contract employees, including its internal analyst and former Pakistan cricket team captain and wicketkeeper Rashid Latif.
Latif was working as an analyst at Game on High, a talk show on PTV Sports featuring Dr. Noman Niaz.
Naeem Bukhari, who was appointed PTV chairman in November, had approved the dismissal in a meeting with the board of directors.
In a notification, the channel cited a lack of funds to terminate its contracts. It has 3,560 full-time workers and seeks to reduce the number of contract employees.
The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting also corrected the move. Latif has been a regular at PTV Sports for many years where he also talked about cricket with host Dr Noman Niaz and many other former cricketers.
According to the dismissal order, Latif joined PTV in 2016 and was the second highest paid employee on the list with a salary of 950,000.
The order stated that “PTV is less than financially supported”. Payments are not forthcoming because of PTV and already has 5, 3.5 regular employees.”
It further said that it was decided to drastically reduce the number of contract employees on higher salaries and therefore recommended the dismissal of eight employees, of whom Latif is a part.
Latif has been active on YouTube for the past few months where he is running a channel called Kit Behand along with Dr. Niaz.—INP
