KARACHI - Strongly condemning the inordinate delay by the provincial information department to clear the long outstanding dues, the Sindh Committee of the All Pakistan Newspapers Society (APNS) at its meeting held yesterday decided to suspend all the advertisements of provincial government from Tuesday (today).
Therefore, no ad in the issues of December 16 (Wednesday) will be published.
The committee expressed its dismay over the non-payment of dues of the member publications based in the Sindh province for the period from the year 2010 to December 2014 and the dues for current year despite clear assurances by the Sindh government and the APNS notice to the adviser to chief minister on information.
The issue relates to the dues of member publications amounting to Rs.530 million whereas the requests to chief minister, adviser to CM and the secretary information remained unattended resulting in accumulation of dues over Rs 630 million which included bills amounting to Rs100 million for the current year. Due to the non-payment of the staggering amount, the financial survival of APNS members has been irretrievably compromised and continues to be threatened.
The committee warned all accredited advertising agencies that during suspension, no advertisements of Sindh government be released to APNS or non-APNS publications else the accreditation will be terminated. The committee also decided that if any non-APNS publication published the advertisements of Sindh government, it would stand debarred from the membership of the APNS. The Sindh committee reiterated its demands that to check the corruption in release of advertisements, data of advertisements should be posted on the website of the Sindh Information Department.
The meeting was attended by the following :Javed Mehr Shamsi, Chairman, Sindh Provincial Committee, Sarmad Ali, Secretary General, APNS, Ilyas Shakir (D/Qaumi Akhbar), Zeeshan Butt (D/Jang), Dr. Jabbar Khattak (Daily/Awami Awaz), Kazi Asad Abid (D/Ibrat), Aijaz-ul-Haq (D/Express), Bilal Farooqui (D/Aghaz), Ghulam Nabi Chandio (D/Pak), Mukhtar Aqil (D/Jurrat), Dr. Waqar Yousuf Azeemi (M/Roohani Digest), Younus Mehr (D/Halchal), Najamuddin Sheikh (D/Deyanat), Rafiq Ahmed Pirzada (D/Pak Sindh), Syed Hamid Hussain Abedi (D/Amn), Muhammad Saleem (D/Sindh Sujag), Younus Riaz (D/Beopar) Ms. Zahida Abbasi(D/Nau Sijj), Faisal Zahid Malik (D/Pakistan Observer), Waheed Jamal (D/Khabrain), Kazi Sajjad Akbar (D/The Regional Times), Abdul Rahman Mangrio (Daily Indus Post), Aamer Mahmood (M/Kiran Digest) and Basheer Memon (D/Nijat).