Aamir Liaquat Hussain, host of the Geo TV channel programme Amaan Ramazan, waves a microphone, asking participants questions during a live show in Karachi.
ISLAMABAD: Pakistani television is screening what many call its most controversial content yet in a ruthless quest for ratings: A talk show host who gives away babies.
Aamir Liaquat Hussain, 41, gave away two abandoned infant girls to childless families last month and plans to give away a baby boy this week.
“If we didn’t find this baby, a cat or a dog would have eaten it,” Hussain said during a broadcast, before presenting a tiny girl wrapped in pink and red to her new parents. The audience applauded.
Hussain usually gives motorbikes, mobile phones and land deeds to audience members who answer questions on Islam. But at the beginning of Ramadan, when TV stations battle for ratings, he astonished Pakistan when he presented two families with babies.
“We were told that we had passed all interviews and had been selected to adopt a baby,” said Riaz Uddin, 40, an engineer. “We got our baby on live TV.”
The abandoned babies were rescued by the Chhipa Welfare Association. “In a day or two, the next baby will be given away, God willing,” its head, Ramzan Chhipa, said yesterday.
While Chhipa teams scour garbage dumps and other sites for discarded newborns, Hussain is also appealing for babies. “If a family cannot afford to bring up their newborn due to poverty or illness then instead of killing them, they should hand over the baby to Dr Aamir,” a notice on his website says, adding the babies would be given to deserving couples on air. The show’s producers did not return calls for comment. It was not clear if poor families wishing to keep their children would be helped.
Many expressed disgust that abandoned babies were being given away in what they see as an attempt to boost ratings. Chhipa insisted thousands of people wanted a baby and potential parents were vetted. The outrage, he said, was the poverty forcing families to abandon children. Hussain’s show is one of such broadcasts. The Pakistani media has flourished following liberalisation after decades of control. Now, presenters fight for audiences and advertising by seeing who is most outrageous.
Recent episodes include a female anchor stalking couples in a park to challenge their morality, and a news programme which ran a live broadcast showing a staff member bleeding to death in an operation theatre after he was shot during riot. In 2008, Hussain hosted scholars who called for the deaths of Ahmadis, a religious sect. Within a day, two Ahmadis were shot dead. The year before, Hussain had to resign as junior minister for religious affairs after denouncing author Salman Rushdie for blasphemy, a crime punished by death in Pakistan. Since then, his university degree has been exposed as a fake and a video showing him making crude jokes with clerics between takes of his show has leaked onto YouTube. Reuters
