Senior journalist Muhammad Ziauddin has passed away in Islamabad at the age of 83 after a prolonged illness, said state-run PTV News on Monday.
Born in 1938 in Chennai, Ziauddin's family moved to Bangladesh where studied BSc in Pharmacy at the Dhaka University. Later, he moved to Pakistan and joined Karachi University to study journalism.
One of his first jobs in the field of journalism was at Pakistan Press Agency. During his career spanning 60 years, Ziauddin wrote for all leading newspapers of Pakistan including Business Recorder.
His last article, published November 3, 2021, for Business Recorder was on Afghanistan's economic collapse.
"Afghanistan is running out of money fast, its currency is in a tail-spin and prices across the board are going through the ceiling," he wrote in the article titled, 'Afghan economy collapsing'.
Read: Afghan economy collapsing
A list of his articles for Business Recorder can be found here:
Tributes pour in
Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry said that the journalist was one of the most capable and fiercely independent journalists he had encountered.
Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting Farrukh Habib also expressed his grief, saying that Ziauddin played a key role in independent journalism in Pakistan.
He prayed for eternal peace for the departed soul and courage for the bereaved family to bear this loss.
Opposition Leader in the National Assembly Shehbaz Sharif and Education Minister Shafqat Mahmood have also paid their tribute to the senior journalist.