 | They can't do this to Rantburg! Without the Pak Daily Times we're going to be mighty thin around here ... |
| We might have to post reruns... |
ISLAMABAD - Pakistani journalists, fighting for better wages and facilities, on Wednesday gave the country’s newspaper owners a seven-day ultimatum for implementation of a new structure of wages. “We will march on to the president’s house in Islamabad and stage a sit-in there until fulfillment of our demands,” said the president of Pakistan Federal Union of Journalists (PFUJ), Pervaiz Shukat.
| "Give us more dough or we go French!" |
Speaking to participants at a rally organized in the garrison town of Rawalpindi to mark the international press freedom day,
| ... in a garrison town... |
he said journalists all over Pakistan would also go on hunger strike if their demand for better wages were not met.
| Can you get the people at the NYT to follow your example? |
| If their wages are that low, maybe it's not a hunger strike? Though they are Muslims, so their liquor bills should be lower. |
Some 300 in number, journalists representing leading national daily newspapers held the rally at the local Press Club. They wanted to go to the presidential camp office in Rawalpindi to apprise President Pervez Musharraf of the acute financial problems faced by them in the absence of a better salary package but were disallowed by local authorities. However, deputy minister for information Tariq Azeem, who represented the ruling Pakistan Muslim League at the rally, received the memorandum of demands from journalists and assured them of full support of the government in implementation of the new package, known as the seventh wage board award and was announced some six years ago.
| "In other words, buzz off!" |
| No, no. I think that was a "we'll get back to you on that." |
Journalists covering proceedings of the federal legislature, or National Assembly, also staged a token walkout on Wednesday from the press galleries to register their protest against non-implementation of the wage board award.
| Maybe it's just my prejudices, but wage boards seem to be just about as useful as ministries of religion. And ministries of information. |
| And slightly more useful than ministries to protect virtue and eliminate vice ... |
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