KARACHI: Mayor Karachi Barrister Murtaza Wahab on Thursday said that access to information, investigative reporting and fact-finding are the main responsibilities of professional journalists, success in this field is possible only through hard work and continuous struggle.
Therefore, he said that journalists related to local government institutions always keep the larger interest of Karachi and citizens in mind by discouraging false and fake news.
He expressed these views while addressing the closing ceremony of a one-day training workshop organized by City Institute of Image Management of KMC on the topic of “Role and Responsibilities of local government Journalists”.
The Mayor Karachi ‘s Spokesperson for Political Affairs Karamullah Waqasi, Senior Journalist and Scholar Mahmood Sham, Mazhar Abbas, Head of the Journalism Department, the University of Karachi Dr. Tausif Ahmed Khan, Shehzad Chughtai, Imran Ali Shah, Director Siam Muhammad Shahid and other officers were also present on this occasion
Mayor Karachi said that local government reporting has a very important role in the better and more effective performance of local bodies as their effective guidance and identification of problems help in the completion of development work.
He said that positive thinking and sincerity is the basic condition for improvement in urban affairs and we get a lot of positive information from journalists reporting on local bodies, from which we get guidance if there is a training workshop for the elected UC chairmen and vice chairmen along with the training of municipal reporters. It will not only improve their performance but also help in solving and understanding civic problems, he added.
The workshop was organized by KMC in collaboration with the Local Bodies Reporters Association, in which more than 35 local body reporters from print, electronic and social media, including ten students of the Journalism Department of University of Karachi, participated.
The speakers on this occasion said that solving urban problems and comprehensive planning for the future are among the responsibilities of these institutions.
Journalism is a sacred profession and journalists have played a very important role in the development of Karachi. It is hoped that they will continue their role in the future and will lend a hand to local bodies in the development of the city.
They said that this workshop organized by senior and experienced journalists will bring useful results and especially young journalists will get a lot of help from the event.
Senior journalist Mehmood Sham, Mazhar Abbas, Dr. Tauseef Ahmed Khan along with Sohail Rab, Aneeb Ahmed, Irfan Ali, Mukhtar Zaman and others also spoke. At the end of the event, training certificates were presented to the workshop participants and commemorative shields were given to the lecturers.