Pakistan Tobacco Company (PTC) arranged a one-day workshop on the "Report Writing Skills" for the district reporters of the NWFP at a local hotel. Journalists from the main tobacco growing areas ie Mardan, Swabi, Charsadda, Mansehra, Nowsehra and the remote Swat district attended the workshop. The chief guest of the function was Dr Shahjahan, head, Department of Mass Communication, University of Peshawar. Raza Zulfiqar, Manager Corporate Affairs PTC, while explaining the objectives of the workshop, stated that this will help the journalists of the district in improving their news gathering and news writing skills.
He also said that the workshop would provide the journalists background information about the agriculture sector of the province. The resource persons for the workshop were Karachi-based senior journalists namely Ashfak Bokhari and Babar Ayaz while Khan Faraz, Secretary Pakistan Tobacco Board (PTB), gave a detailed presentation on the "Overview of Agriculture Sector & Tobacco Growing in NWFP."
Ashfak Bokhari and Babar Ayaz gave lectures on news-gathering and news-writing. For them the important principle of journalism was objectivity whereby the reporter while covering an event must always consider himself as outsider ie they are supposed to be observers and not participants.
Khan Faraz, Secretary, Pakistan Tobacco Board, in his presentation, gave detailed information about the NWFP agriculture sector with a special reference to tobacco growing and its effects on the economy.
Terming tobacco a highly labour-intensive crop, he explained that about 80,000 persons are involved in its cultivation, 50,000 are engaged in 26 factories of the tobacco industry and another 1 million find indirect employment.
"It is also an important source of foreign exchange earnings for the country as it earned 13.226m dollars during 2003-04 through its export." he said.
In the end. Asif Khan, head of Leaf Operations, PTC distributed certificates among the participants of the workshop.
Comments
Comments are closed.