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| Saturday, June 20, 2009 By Muhammad Ahmad Noorani ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan people's Party government has finally set up a complete infrastructure to 'monitor' private channels and hired a private company for this purpose. The government though has admitted that the process of monitoring is being initiated on its nod but it is not in the knowledge as to how much money will be paid to the private company for the monitoring. Federal Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira while talking to The News confirmed that it was after the government's nod that Pakistan Electronic Media Regularity Authority (Pemra) hired a private firm to monitor the telecast of private TV news channels to make them strictly obey the Pemra laws and policy. According to the agreement, the new firm will monitor the telecasted programmes as well as advertisements of these news channels. The News has reliably learnt that initially Qamar Zaman Kaira had barred Pemra from hiring this firm. However, while talking to The News late Thursday night Kaira said, "Why would I stop Pemra to hire a firm for doing a good job. The firm will simply monitor these channels in order to make sure that Pemra policy is being followed in letter and spirit." Chairman Pemra Mushtaq Malik while speaking to The News rejected the allegation that this firm was hired without advertising expression of interest in the newspapers and without following layout procedure. The chairman Pemra and its executive member Dr Jabbar said the advertisement in this regard was published in newspapers and this company M/s TRASE was selected after full scrutiny. Mushtaq said as per Pemra regulations all the TV channels are allowed to air advertisements for only 12 minutes in an hour (4 hours and 48 minutes in 24 hours), which is not followed by any channel. Another regulation says all these channels are supposed to pay the government 5 per cent of their gross annual revenue, he added. Mushtaq said not a single channel has ever paid this amount to Pemra or the government. He said Pemra has also written to the SECP in this regard. Mushtaq was of the view that for claiming the outstanding amount from the channels there was a dire need of some firm which could properly monitor all these things. It is worth mentioning here that Pemra already has a full-fledged monitoring wing headed by a director general in which different people are hired as 'experts' against hefty packages. According to details, this firm has been hired on very high rates of Rs80,000 per month per channel. The chairman Pemra said he didn't remember the exact figure (of hiring this firm). However, Qamar Zaman Kaira said he was sure that the final bidding amount is much less than Rs80,000 per month per channel. "I am sure that amount is not as higher as Rs80,000," he said. However, Tahir, a DGM of Pemra who signed this agreement confessed to The News that the amount against which TRASE was hired was Rs80,000 per month per channel. Tahir said this firm would only monitor the advertisements and other issues in compliance with Pemra policy. He claimed that it would have nothing to do with other contents of these TV channels like talk shows and news items. Kaira also told The News that this firm was hired for an interim period. According to the contract copy this is for three months (extendable). Sources in Pemra told The News that initially this firm will monitor the contents of ten top news channels and later more channels will be brought under the loop. |
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N A D E E M M A L I K
Director Programme
AAJ TV
ISLAMABAD
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