NA amends PEMRA bill, allows Cross Media Ownership
'Pakistan Times' Wire Service

ISLAMABAD: The National Assembly on Thursday passed four bills including PEMRA amendments and Law Reforms bill. The house rejected amendments in PEMRA bill presented by the opposition.

An opposition member Zafar Ali Shah said that government wants to take control of the electronic media through the bill.

According to PEMRA Bill, cross media ownership has been granted; whereas, powers have been given to Authority to issue written directives to stop airing any program on the basis of specific reasons.

The house also passed the Law Reforms bill, according to which the police is bound to inform heirs of a person detained about his whereabouts and the reason for his arrest.

The arrested person will also have right for legal advice or a lawyer while at police station, Law minister Wasi Zafar said at a press conference after the passage of the bill, to brief media about the bill's salient features.

He said the court would not grant stay order after hearing one party, except in the case of demolition of a premises or a person’s dispossession from a building.

Under the Alternate Dispute Resolution Committee, while the case is with the court, it can appoint a person for mediation and reaching an agreement between the two aggrieved parties.

The mediator will have 60 days for dispute resolution which can be extended by the court for another 30 days, if the two sides are closer to reaching a mutual settlement of the dispute.

Throughout the mediation process, he added, the court will continue with its proceedings of the case.

He said the process of summoning the respondent, after receiving application from the complainant, will be completed within a day.

The complainant will be responsible for furnishing all the necessary documents and papers with his complaint.

Wasi Zafar said the respondent will also be served notice for appearance before the court in one go and unlike previous practice of first sending a letter and then registered letter, modern means of communications like e-mail or fax will also be used.

Earlier, during the clause by clause reading of the bill in the house, the opposition's amendments were rejected. The MMA members along with the rest of the opposition, also staged a token walk out from the proceedings saying that doing legislation with Pervez Musharraf as the president of Pakistan was not possible.

Assembly also passed Federal Public Service Commission(amended) Bill 2005 under which service tenure of the Federal Public service commission has been reduced to two years from four years.●