ISLAMABAD:Senate Standing Committee on Information and Broadcasting on Thursday directed the management of the Pakistan Television Corporation to present a comprehensive report on the implementation of the recommendations of the panel during past three years.

The committee, chaired by Senator Faisal Javed, also directed PTV to make arrangements for simultaneous live coverage of the sessions of National Assembly and Senate as presently in case of simultaneous session of both the houses, the PTV gives live coverage to National Assembly session and Senate session recording is played in the night.

Faisal Javed also suggested that PTV should give coverage to the standing committees of the Parliament and telecast interviews of its members on regular basis.

The Chairman of the committee also expressed his disappointment over lack of proper digital plan in the PTV. He said that people want to watch old television plays of the PTV but they were not available on the internet. He said that in the next meeting, a report should be presented as to why so far PTV’s digital plan could not be implemented.

Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib informed the committee that from the first week of August, PTV will be fully converted to HD. The Minister said that guidance and recommendations of the committee were welcome as it would prove helpful in improving the performance of the ministry and its attached departments.

He said that in PTV technical equipment was outdated as no attention was paid on technology in the past. He said that modern financial system was being introduced in PTV which would also facilitate in payment of pensions.

While giving a detailed briefing on the working and performance of the national broadcaster, Managing Director PTV Amer Manzoor said that its role was to promote national narrative, projects and culture. He said that digital plan of the PTV was in final stages and it would be finalized by December.

He said that major source of its funding was the license fee being collected through electrify bills.

MD PTV said that during past few years the trend of advertisements to digital media has increased shrinking the share of both print and electronic media which has affected the PTV as well. He said that during past few years the share of electronic media has fallen from RS 42 billion to 26 billion whereas the share of print media has fallen to Rs 13 billion from 23 bn. On the contrary, the share of digital platforms has increased from Rs 6 billion to 14 billion.

He said that on operational level PTV had become a profit earning entity as in 2018-19 it earned Rs 853 million profit and in 2019-20 it earned Rs 1.1 billion profit. However, he said, it had liabilities of pensions and issue of obsolete equipment and over staffing.

He said that from next moth PTV News would become fully HD channel. The MD said that 73 per cent of PTV revenue was being spent on salaries whereas only 27 were available for production.

While taking up a public petition regarding fulfillment of contract by the PTV, the committee asked both the parties to settle the matter through arbitration and submit a report to the committee.

The meeting was attended by Senators Mustafa Nawaz Khokhar, Irfan Siddiqui, Aon Abbas, Naseema Ehsan, Tahir Bizinjo and Kamran Michael.

Besides Secretary Information and Broadcasting Shahira Shahid, senior

officials from the ministry and PTV were also present in the meeting.