Radio Pakistan is a professional organisation and people have been joining it in the programme, news side and engineering side out of their interest and commitment despite the bitter fact that the salaries were pretty on the low side.
Over the years, retired progamme and news personnel used to be either re-employment or engaged on a contract basis to avail their lifelong expertise. Such arrangements also enabled them to supplement their meager pension to some extent.
Sometime back, some committee of the National Assembly proposed – with one stroke of a pen – banning the re-employment or engagement of retired Radio employees.
The ban on re-employment of retired Radio employees is understandable to some extent – it closes the doors for fresh job seekers. But barring retired Radio employees from doing any work on daily wages is height of injustice. Such retired personnel on programme and news sides are mainly engaged on the basis of their lifelong experience. They are only paid when they render some service on an assignment, maybe once or twice in a month or so, and are not paid any fixed amount every month like the re-employed employees.
The worthy Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting is requested to kindly look into the matter and if at all there is such imposed by any NA Committee, it should be relaxed to the extent of engagement of retired Radio employees. Please look into the matter from a humanitarian point of view and that too on priority basis. This relaxation is requested so it may bring some additional money to Radio Pakistan pensioners.
AAMER A. NAJMEE
LAHORE
