Naeema Baloch, a graduate of Mass Communication from Sardar Bahadur Khan Women University Quetta, prepares for a commission job at Quetta city in Balochistan. She avoids practicing journalism owing to economic hurdles that she faces as a new entrant in the field, besides insecurity. Instead, she says that she has to work tirelessly and gets an income far more insufficient than what she thinks that she deserves. And in-between, she regrets the resources that she put into getting her four-year BS degree.
“When I was looking to join a discipline to study, journalism seemed to be a noble profession for me,” Naeema says. She says that things were different when she observed them after joining the field.
“I do not know how things are in other part of the country, but in Balochistan we cannot cover many issue,s or need to be one-sided, which affects the noble cause of journalism including a direct effect to one’s salary,” she says and ends up quoting that the ‘influential persons’ – without naming them – will always find a way to get your salary frozen in one or the other way.
A report shared by the office of Directorate General Public Relations quotes 178 daily newspapers, 117 monthly, 40 weekly and 10 fortnightly magazines in Balochistan – in English, Urdu, Pashto and Balochi – yet we see a much lesser number actually functional in the province.
As noted from the number of admissions in Mass Communication departments in the province’s universities, some eight out of every ten students of mass communication abandon their field and, instead, begin preparing for a departmental or commission job.
Balochistan is already declared a ‘tough ground’ for journalists, as Baloch journalist Sajid Hussain, was killed in Sweden, Anwar Khetran was ‘abducted’ from Barkhan last year, and the murder of Daily Azadi’s young journalist Abdul Wahid Raisani on 24 April 2021 when he was on his way home from office. On top of all this, economic backwardness works as a key factor for new entrants in quitting journalism as a profession. There are educational access problems too: including the absence of mass communication as a subject in school and college level.
“Although the number of newspapers is more than a hundred in the province – excluding the electronic media – we can only see few functioning from within the province, while the most part, or you may say nine out of each ten newspapers in the province, belong to a non-Balochistani,” quotes Yasmeen Baloch, a journalist based in Balochistan. She adds that when it comes to English papers, they rarely find one fully functional in Balochistan where a student aspiring to be a journalist in English might continue working as a full-time journalist – other than very few which also lack plenty of other facilities, not least of their drawbacks being the economic burdens that they impose on employees. “They do not pay the new appointees,” she says.
In a circumstance where one finds crisis of opportunity in working as a full-time journalist in Balochistan, students, when they graduate, get more attracted towards preparing for commission and getting a job at any level, but never consider adopting journalism as a profession. The reasons include almost no vacant positions where they feel comfortable to work as a full-time journalist considering their economic problems.
Secondly, the broadcasting media has very few working opportunities. The other national newspapers in Pakistan, which keep correspondents in Balochistan, or in the other provinces too, do not pay anything to them (or very less), adding more to the doubts of emerging journalists in the province.
Journalists work very hard to collect the news, ensure their presence in several places and sometimes even risk their lives by reporting in a conflict zone like Balochistan, but when it comes to receiving a remuneration, they get a very low amount. “As a reporter of Intekhab (a provincial newspaper) I got only 12,000 per month,” Zubair Baloch says. “I had to work for more than years but that could not help me in getting an increment in my salary.”
Zubair was still fortunate that the newspaper owner looked after him, but how about others? Aziz Ullah (his real name is changed on request to protect his identity), a reporter of 92 News, says that he only receives 7,000 rupees per month which does not help him fulfill his basic needs. “I even have to put petrol in my bike from my own money,” he says. As per the National Minimum Wage 2022, any worker should receive minimum 25,000 rupees per month for their services, which is rare in Balochistan’s case.
Haseeb-Ur-Rehman, co-owner of Daily Balochistan Express, says they have a staff of 80 including reporters from across the province. They are paid on the basis of their work and experience, beginning from 20,000 to 100,000 rupees per month. “We have tried to accommodate as many reporters from across Balochistan as we could,” he adds, saying that they still suffered from gaining public advertisements and a circulation of their print which made it tough to appoint more paid staff members.
“I wanted to go with journalism as a full-time reporter,” Baloch explains, adding that she felt she needed a certain sum of money in remuneration, which she could not gain. She said that she was interested in English reporting but that she could not succeed in generating an income from any English newspaper, including Balochistan Express, while Daily Times had no ‘sufficient budget’ for hiring journalists.
“Daily Times, too, does not pay its correspondents and gives little space, which makes it a difficult job for them unless they establish a good name and fame in the journalism community,” she says. “It takes a lot of time to get established in the journalism community for a journalist from a backward community like ours,” she adds.
“Daily Dawn is is also firing most of its correspondents,” says Farooq Awan, a senior Pakistani journalist. He adds that the newspapers in Pakistan have a limited number of paid staff members because of financial crisis. “Paid journalists from Balochistan are few and even we at Daily Times do not have one due to lack of resources,” he says.
“There are around 200 members at Quetta Press Club,” says Yahya Sahil Reki, a journalist based in Quetta. Each year, 25 to 30 graduates emerge from Sardar Bahadur Khan Women University and 45 from the University of Balochistan, but when you look for them on the ground, only few appear. Balochistan’s poverty rates are rising.
At such a point, when journalists find generating a basic livable income to be an issue if they opt for a certain profession, what option do they have, other than quitting?
“When I was looking to join a discipline to study, journalism seemed to be a noble profession for me,” Naeema says. She says that things were different when she observed them after joining the field.
“I do not know how things are in other part of the country, but in Balochistan we cannot cover many issue,s or need to be one-sided, which affects the noble cause of journalism including a direct effect to one’s salary,” she says and ends up quoting that the ‘influential persons’ – without naming them – will always find a way to get your salary frozen in one or the other way.
A report shared by the office of Directorate General Public Relations quotes 178 daily newspapers, 117 monthly, 40 weekly and 10 fortnightly magazines in Balochistan – in English, Urdu, Pashto and Balochi – yet we see a much lesser number actually functional in the province.
As noted from the number of admissions in Mass Communication departments in the province’s universities, some eight out of every ten students of mass communication abandon their field and, instead, begin preparing for a departmental or commission job.
Balochistan is already declared a ‘tough ground’ for journalists, as Baloch journalist Sajid Hussain, was killed in Sweden, Anwar Khetran was ‘abducted’ from Barkhan last year, and the murder of Daily Azadi’s young journalist Abdul Wahid Raisani on 24 April 2021 when he was on his way home from office. On top of all this, economic backwardness works as a key factor for new entrants in quitting journalism as a profession. There are educational access problems too: including the absence of mass communication as a subject in school and college level.
“Although the number of newspapers is more than a hundred in the province – excluding the electronic media – we can only see few functioning from within the province, while the most part, or you may say nine out of each ten newspapers in the province, belong to a non-Balochistani,” quotes Yasmeen Baloch, a journalist based in Balochistan. She adds that when it comes to English papers, they rarely find one fully functional in Balochistan where a student aspiring to be a journalist in English might continue working as a full-time journalist – other than very few which also lack plenty of other facilities, not least of their drawbacks being the economic burdens that they impose on employees. “They do not pay the new appointees,” she says.
In a circumstance where one finds crisis of opportunity in working as a full-time journalist in Balochistan, students, when they graduate, get more attracted towards preparing for commission and getting a job at any level, but never consider adopting journalism as a profession. The reasons include almost no vacant positions where they feel comfortable to work as a full-time journalist considering their economic problems.
Secondly, the broadcasting media has very few working opportunities. The other national newspapers in Pakistan, which keep correspondents in Balochistan, or in the other provinces too, do not pay anything to them (or very less), adding more to the doubts of emerging journalists in the province.
Journalists work very hard to collect the news, ensure their presence in several places and sometimes even risk their lives by reporting in a conflict zone like Balochistan, but when it comes to receiving a remuneration, they get a very low amount. “As a reporter of Intekhab (a provincial newspaper) I got only 12,000 per month,” Zubair Baloch says. “I had to work for more than years but that could not help me in getting an increment in my salary.”
Zubair was still fortunate that the newspaper owner looked after him, but how about others? Aziz Ullah (his real name is changed on request to protect his identity), a reporter of 92 News, says that he only receives 7,000 rupees per month which does not help him fulfill his basic needs. “I even have to put petrol in my bike from my own money,” he says. As per the National Minimum Wage 2022, any worker should receive minimum 25,000 rupees per month for their services, which is rare in Balochistan’s case.
Haseeb-Ur-Rehman, co-owner of Daily Balochistan Express, says they have a staff of 80 including reporters from across the province. They are paid on the basis of their work and experience, beginning from 20,000 to 100,000 rupees per month. “We have tried to accommodate as many reporters from across Balochistan as we could,” he adds, saying that they still suffered from gaining public advertisements and a circulation of their print which made it tough to appoint more paid staff members.
“I wanted to go with journalism as a full-time reporter,” Baloch explains, adding that she felt she needed a certain sum of money in remuneration, which she could not gain. She said that she was interested in English reporting but that she could not succeed in generating an income from any English newspaper, including Balochistan Express, while Daily Times had no ‘sufficient budget’ for hiring journalists.
“Daily Times, too, does not pay its correspondents and gives little space, which makes it a difficult job for them unless they establish a good name and fame in the journalism community,” she says. “It takes a lot of time to get established in the journalism community for a journalist from a backward community like ours,” she adds.
“Daily Dawn is is also firing most of its correspondents,” says Farooq Awan, a senior Pakistani journalist. He adds that the newspapers in Pakistan have a limited number of paid staff members because of financial crisis. “Paid journalists from Balochistan are few and even we at Daily Times do not have one due to lack of resources,” he says.
“There are around 200 members at Quetta Press Club,” says Yahya Sahil Reki, a journalist based in Quetta. Each year, 25 to 30 graduates emerge from Sardar Bahadur Khan Women University and 45 from the University of Balochistan, but when you look for them on the ground, only few appear. Balochistan’s poverty rates are rising.
At such a point, when journalists find generating a basic livable income to be an issue if they opt for a certain profession, what option do they have, other than quitting?