ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Information Marriyum Aurangzeb has said when former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was talking about respect of vote, voice of a democratic leader was suppressed in media and the whole nation took notice of this action on their television screens.
She expressed these views during her address at the National Press Club Islamabad on the occasion of issuing of notification on 8th Wage Board Award by federal government on Wednesday. Marriyum said that she went to Supreme Court when ex-PM Nawaz Sharif was banned for life at that day as a Pakistani not as a representative of her party and she expressed her own views on media. She said during that occasion a few emotional and aggrieved workers started chanting slogans. She told them that Nawaz Sharif strictly issued directions that slogans against judges and judiciary should not be raised. She said that if chief justice checks video footage of that day, he will come to know that slogans were not raised against him.
She regretfully quoted statement of the chief justice in which he said that slogans were raised against him when Nawaz Sharif was banned for life. She said that it was not the part of the training and tradition of PML-N to raise slogans against constitutional institutions. She said that Nawaz Sharif met same fate as 17 other prime ministers met earlier.
Addressing the ceremony with regard to the notification for the Wage Board, she said that the government had completed the process of constituting the Wage Board after a hiatus of seventeen years during which the journalists remained deprived of their rights. She said that the difficulties faced by the journalist community had been overcome through collective efforts. The journalists had got the dividend for the efforts, which they had been making for the institution of Wage Board during the last seventeen years, she added.
She said that whatever had been happening during the last seventy years and the traditions that were set, were absolutely wrong. The minister said that the government by constituting the Wage Board had not done any favour to the journalists but given them their due right. The journalists, she said, were such a segment of the society who kept democracy going through the power of their pen and had always stood with it through thick and thin, and the ups and downs that it had to endure. She said that she was well aware of the difficulties that the working journalists faced during the discharge of their professional assignments.
She said that it was the good luck of the prime minister, the government and her that the notification of Wage Board was issued during the tenure of PML-N government. The real work in that regard was still to be done and hopefully it would be accomplished within the tenure of the government, she said, adding that the step had reinforced media-government relations that existed before it.
Marriyum said that the Eighth Wage Board would provide economic security to the journalist community solving their problems pertaining to household and education. She thanked the newspaper owners for their support in that regard.
She said that the government was also working on the bill regarding security and safety of the journalists. The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting had also played a significant role in the finalization of the Wage Board and its approval from the cabinet, she added.
The minister informed the audience that she would visit Sindh and Balochistan shortly. Marriyum said that the Constitution delineated the powers and functions of the state institutions and if all of them worked within their stipulated spheres it would become a source of strength for all.
The minister while handing over the notification of the Wage Board to the leadership of the journalists said that she would never forget the love and respect that she was given and also expressed her gratitude to them.
PFUJ President Afzal Butt, National Press Club president, IIUJ president and other representative bodies of journalists thanked Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbassi, federal ministers and Minister of State for Information Marriyum Aurangzeb for issuing the notification of Wage Board. The ceremony was attended by the representatives of the media bodies and a large number of journalists.
