Cash-strapped DD on hiring spree

Nor is this the only expense that Prasar Bharati bigwigs have totted up. CEO Rajeeva Ratna Shah has recently hired retired director in the Ministry of Home Affairs, H R Goyal, as consultant to helpframe the rules and regulations of Prasar Bharati. Goyal joins a phalanx of officers on special duty and consultants to an organisation which will switch to a grant-in-aid from the government on April 1 this year but which till recently could not afford to pay its casual newsreaders four months’ salary and which has chopped the allocation for chat shows on DD News: from Rs 1.25 lakh to Rs 85,000. DD News also recently issued a memo of cost-cutting measures, including the use of office transport. It has also delayed the shift of the news studio to the first floor in the Central Production Centre, which would have cost the organisation Rs 30 lakh.

But the hiring continues. Apart from filmmaker Ketan Mehta and his wife, Deepa, who are already on board as design consultants for the “look” of DD News, former Star TV programming head Rakesh Sharma is doing something similar for the National Network.

There is Sanjay Nigam, who was hired as a consultant from the now-defunct Television India, to launch DD Newson August 15. In addition, there is S D Kumar, who was hired as Secretary of Prasar Bharati (he retired as deputy secretary in the Information and Broadcasting Ministry) by S S Gill, quit soon after in a huff, and was re-hired by Gill’s successor O P Kejriwal.

There are three other officers on special duty — G Chatterjee and G R Raghvendra from the Central Secretariat Services, and Brij Bakshi, a deputy controller, who works as Shah’s special assistant.