‘Accountability is a bruised word in our societyÂ’
New ACCA programme launched on professionalism and ethics
KARACHI: Accountability is a bruised word in our society and people look up to the media to do this job for them, said Geo TV president Imran Aslam at the launch of the Association of Certified Chartered Accountants’ (ACCA) new ethics qualification Wednesday.
Journalists need to understand their own worth today, Aslam urged. He recalled an incident when he was approached by a young boy who wanted to have his article published in his newspaper. When Aslam agreed to publish the article, the boy suddenly put his hand in his pocket and took out a one-hundred rupee note and offered it to Aslam. The journalist refused and explained to the young writer that it worked the other way around; the organisation would pay him.
Aslam gave another example from the time he was the editor of an English newspaper. The senior-most ranking government official in the province asked him what it would cost to keep his mouth shut for his writings. Aslam was offered a plot of land as a deal which he rejected. Silence was not the answer to questions and it was the media which had broken the silence, he said.
ACCA Chief Executive Allen Blewitt, who introduced the new programme, said that finance professionals should make their profession more attractive by maintaining ethics. Strategy and risk management should also be worked out keeping professionalism and ethics in mind. Blewitt had consulted 25,000 stakeholders over the new qualification and said that much of this effort was spurred by the knowledge that the absence of ethics had recently caused the downfall of several big firms.
Chief guest Sindh Minister for Education Dr Hameeda Khuhro applauded the ACCA’s efforts. “The government is running on ‘ad hocism’ and lacks professionalism and ethics,” she commented. “It is a war of government officials not professionals.”
Cricket legend and former Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) chief Majid Khan shed some light on professionalism and ethics in sports. “I feel proud that the term professionalism has been included in the trades now. First, it was only [a word used for] singers and actors but now journalists, social workers and people in similar trades are assessed as professionals.” Khan quoted a few examples from cricket to elaborate the difference between amateurs and professionals.
The head of the University of Karachi’s Visual Studies Department, Durriya Kazi, who appeared as writer Feryal Gauhar could not make it, said that times had changed and one had to work with what now existed. She compared board games such as chess and snakes and ladders and gilli danda, baraf pani and khokho that she defined as games of opportunity. A child develops ethics through the activities he is engaged in at that time, she argued, and he later develops good or bad professional ethics.
Source: Daily Times
Date:10/4/2007
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