GILGIT: Owners of over a dozen newspapers in Gilgit-Baltistan
(GB) have stopped publishing in protest against the non-payment of their dues
on account of publication of government advertisements.
On Saturday, not a single local newspaper was published in
Gilgit-Baltistan, the region from where no national newspaper is published.
Local journalists boycotted the budget session of the GB
Legislative Assembly on Friday.
According to a press release, the decision to stop
publishing newspapers was taken at a meeting of the GB Newspapers Society
(GBNS) on Friday. The owners said that dues of around Rs50 million were unpaid.
GBNS president Eman Shah told Dawn that the GB government
had not paid their advertisement dues for that past four years.