By Usman Manzoor
ISLAMABAD: Thousands of contractual and daily wage employees of the state-owned Pakistan Broadcasting Corporation (PBC) have not been paid their salaries for the last two months because it has no money in its budget.
PBC Director General Ghulam Murtaza Solangi confirmed to The News that daily wage and contractual employees had not been paid salaries because the PBC was running short of money.
He said the PBC had asked for an extra Rs 800 million as supplementary budget from the Finance Division to meet the expenses of the last quarter of the financial year and was hopeful of positive results.
Over 800 employees of the PBC, working at the headquarters in Islamabad, had not been paid this month’s salary till the filing of this report while those working at other stations are waiting for their salaries for the last two-and-a-half months.
Sources in the PBC say this discrimination is being meted out to contractual and daily wage employees, while regular employees are getting salaries as per routine. However, the PCB employees said even the regular employees had not been paid for hiring of houses last month.
Sources say Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani addresses the nation on the first Friday of every month from the PBC, and Information Minister Qamar Zaman Kaira attends a programme ‘Neya Ufaq’ every Tuesday, adding these problems were placed before both dignitaries but fell on deaf ears.
The PBC United Staff Organisation has also written numerous letters to the president, the prime minister and the information minister but to no avail. Sources say the contractual employees working in almost every department have not been regularised, despite the announcement of the prime minister.
The PBC director general said it was because of budget deficit. He said the total demand of the PBC was Rs 2,700 million, while it only got Rs 1,700 million and when the prime minister announced 15-20 per cent increase in salaries, it further cost the PBC Rs 163 million.
“We have a huge chunk of pending liabilities and, therefore, we are not able to pay the salaries of contractual and daily wage employees,” said Solangi, adding: “We are pleading a case of Rs 800 million supplementary budget and are hopeful that we will resolve the issue in the next three to four days.”
He said the PBC from the chunk for April could only pay the salaries of the regular staff and pensions, and the electricity bill. “The April chunk was so late that we even had to pay late surcharge on electricity bills,” Solangi added.
The director general said the salaries of contractual employees were mainly paid from the programme expenses, while the PBC did not have any programme income, which had delayed the salaries for over three months.
As financial disaster has already struck the PBC in an unheard manner, it is feared that over 60 units of Radio Pakistan might go off the air during loadshedding hours as the organisation has no money to pay the suppliers providing diesel for its generators.
Source: The News
Date:4/24/2010
