The constitution guarantees protection of fundamental rights but the seventh wage board award announced in 2000 has yet to be implemented, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said during the hearing of an appeal filed by newspaper proprietors against the award.
The importance of media cannot be ignored in this age when access to information is of prime importance, he remarked. A three-member bench headed by the chief justice was hearing an appeal filed by the All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS) against Sindh High Court’s (SHC) decision announced on May 31. The SHC rejected four identical petitions of APNS against the implementation of the Seventh Wage Board Award. Abdul Hafeez Pirzada, counsel for newspaper proprietors, concluding his arguments submitted that journalists get annual increments and many draw higher salaries than decided by the wage board.
“A journalist who was getting Rs12,000 when the award was announced in the year 2000 is now getting Rs23,000,” he informed the bench. The chief justice said it was difficult for six members of a family to survive on Rs23,000. “Disparity and injustice in society lead to corruption,” he remarked.
The counsel reiterated that the wage board award cannot be implemented because it violates the due process of law. It was a discriminatory law and had no link with ‘working journalists’.
Pirzada submitted that the wage board’s chairman was biased against his clients and he had announced the seventh wage board award without consulting board members.
Counsel for Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ) Salman Akram Raja, argued that APNS had filed writ petitions against the implementation of the seventh wage board award and not against the law itself. The court adjourned hearing of the case till Thursday and directed the PFUJ counsel to conclude his arguments.
Published in The Express Tribune, September 29th, 2011.
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