GILGIT: Owners of over a dozen newspapers in GilgitBaltistan (GB) have stopped publishing in protest against the non-payment of their dues on account of publication of government advertisements.

On Saturday, not a single local newspaper was published in Gilgit-Baltistan, the region from where no national newspaper is published.

Local journalists boycotted the budget session of the GB Legislative Assembly on Friday.

According to a press release, the decision to stop publishing newspapers was taken at a meeting of the GB Newspapers Society (GBNS) on Friday. The owners said that dues of around Rs50 million were unpaid.

GBNS president Eman Shah told Dawn that the GB government had not paid their advertisement dues for that past four years.