Articles and letters may be edited for the purposes of clarity and space. They are published in good faith with a view to enlightening all the stakeholders. However, the contents of these writings may not necessarily match the views of the newspaper.
No role model?
Newspapers industry has three main professional bodies looking after the interests of newspapers managements, editors and journalists and workers at national, provincial and down levels throughout the country. Office-bearers of these professional bodies or for that matter any other professional organization in general and the heads of these bodies in particular are supposed to be the role models for others while looking after their interests and setting examples for others to be dealing fairly, justly and legally with the journalists and other workers employed in theirs and other organizations.
If the chief of the newspapers managements or of the editors do not do justice with journalists and workers employed in his newspapers then where they are supposed to go and at whose door they are supposed to knock for securing justice. No doubt, the newspapers managements/ owners have the right to hire and fire the journalists and other workers. But in all fairness this should be done within legal limits, those fired should be paid their dues and then showed the doors.
According to the reports, the management of an Urdu newspaper and one of the chain of newspapers owned by Islamabad based editors body president has during last couple of months fired pretty larger of journalists and workers. And this has been done without paying them their dues, running into lakhs, quite unjustifiably, immorally and illegally. The editors’ body president has exercised his right of firing the employees but he has failed to comply with legal and moral obligations of paying all dues to the employees being so fired and also to be a role model for others to say the least.
M Z RIFAT
Lahore
Covid-19 and global implications
Currently world is facing a severe disease which has spread to more than 200 counties leaving disastrous impacts on public health, economy and many other things. Developed and the developing countries all are concerned about this virus. The developed countries are trying to make a vaccine, however, their race to develop vaccine is not about saving humanity but it seems more about material gains. On the other hand, developing countries are struggling with lack of resources and looking towards developed institutions.
Other than apathy of developed countries, the hard blow came in the form of US withdrawing from funding of World Health Organisation (WHO). With humanity on verge of collapse, such actions are only accelerating undoing of long-cherished liberal notion. Coupled with this is the steep fall of global economy that is being termed as “New Great Depression.” This sorry state of affairs is only going to exacerbate conditions of the poor all over the world. This is a global issue that needs global response. The state of affairs sadly is that USA blames China and vice versa.
Every country in this situation only thinks about its own citizens not for humanity which is also sad and an alarming things because this is a serious threat for humanity not for a single country. The developed countries are not serious as they are taking this issue as a humanitarian issue. They consider this issue as they took global warming and pollution. Besides its dark side, the pandemic exposed its positive impacts as well. Ozone layer started recovering. It is an encouraging sign. As the world goes on for lockdown with no traffic on the roads and no industrial pollution, the Mother Nature gets to repair itself. The utter failure of all governments to curb the menace of contagion has, once again, brought the significance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to home.
In these circumstances, we should take some help from technology in this way robots are very effective in this situation. The notion of AI doctors is highly welcoming because every life is precious. We can use technology in a very positive way rather than destruction and AI doctors can help patients than human doctors and we know that many doctors and nurses died while treating Covid-19 patients. We should also take help from robots for spray purpose and spray gates should establish on public places.
Talha Mahmood
Jauharabad, Khushab
*****
The corona virus pandemic has constrained us to remain at home. But amid all the stressing news, we have a chance to utilise our time in the best possible way. We can assign this time toward meaningful endeavours. This is an incredible time to reconnect with family and friends in a meaningful way.
We can just put down our phones and talk with our families. We can look into new developments, blogs, newsletters, articles and books. We can utilise this time wisely to lift ourselves up intellectually. We can read books that will help us gain more knowledge. We can exercise and practice meditation that can unwind our lives and relax our souls. This time can be utilised to do some gardening or we can create some online business. We can look at different online courses and mobile apps to effectively learn new languages. Besides, this time can be also be utilised to do something creative like painting, learning calligraphy and writing poetry.
We can learn cooking or baking. In spite of the fact that there is a ton of panic everywhere throughout the world due to the coronavirus circumstance, however this huge amount of time can also be viewed as a blessing in disguise, that can be used to brush up our own selves so when it’s everything over, we can enjoy an extraordinary feeling of achievement and appreciate that we didn’t squander the valuable weeks or months of our lives.
MARYUM SARDAR
Islamabad
