129 staff were terminated from the group’s Lahore office and eight from its Multan office, alongside the closure of Awaz, an Urdu paper with a readership of over one million. The move follows an earlier round of retrenchments on May 24, when 80 employees from Jang Rawalpindi and The News were dismissed without prior notice amid ongoing delays in salary payments.

The termination letters during the first wave of retrenchments lacked the official Jang Group logo and were issued under the names ‘Total Media Solutions’ and ‘Value Added Services Corporation.’ These firms, reportedly created and staffed by the Jang Group, function as third-party contractors in an apparent effort to breach established labour laws in Pakistan.

The notices to affected employees shown to IFJ in May cited a “drastic reduction in workload” as the primary reason for the retrenchments, with other justifications including shifting consumer behaviour driven by the rapid growth of electronic and digital media; a sharp reduction in newspaper size; a decline of over 25 per cent in advertising revenue and 23 per cent drop in circulation income; and the adoption of advanced technologies reducing the need for manual labour.

Jang Media Group operates multiple newspapers and television channels in Pakistan, employing over 6,000 media workers, and has been facing growing internal challenges, including salary reductions and persistent delays in payments. In 2023, the group was criticised for systematically underpaying workers, creating job insecurity and withholding benefits, sparking serious concern across the industry.

Media organisations and trade unions across Pakistan have condemned the second wave of mass terminations, with the PFUJ and its regional affiliate unions demonstrating outside the Jang offices on June 25, pledging to organise countrywide protests, and launching a challenge to the terminations before the country’s National Industrial Relations Commission (NIRC).

The PFUJ said: “The PFUJ leadership vehemently condemns the economic killing of journalists by an organisation that claims to be the largest media institution in the country. Exploiting journalists under the guise of an economic crisis in the media industry is unacceptable in any regard.”

The IFJ said, “This second mass termination by Pakistan’s largest media group is in violation of Pakistan’s labour laws and the government must take action to safeguard the rights of all retrenched employees. Journalists cannot be expected to report freely and fairly when their livelihoods are constantly under threat and their basic right to proper pay is disregarded. The IFJ calls for the swift reinstatement of the retrenched media workers and immediate action to safeguard the work of journalists across the country.”