Artiste honorarium programme halted

PESHAWAR: A government programme to provide 500 artistes with honourariums has been halted by a court after it was challenged for lack of transparency. A two-judge bench of the Peshawar High Court (PHC), comprising Chief Justice Waqar Ahmad Seth and Justice Musarat Hilali, on Tuesday heard the arguments of the lawyer of the 40 petitioners who had challenged the programme. The court stayed the programme and issued a notice to respondents including the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Culture Directorate to submit reply against the allegations at the next hearing of the case. A writ petition by Bibi Saeeda and 39 others, filed through Syed Akhtar, contended that the honoraria, titled ‘Sahafat k Zinda Ameen’, was only being provided to cherry-picked artistes of the Cultural Directorate and members of the committee which had been constituted to draft a list of beneficiaries.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 19^th, 2018.