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Published: March. 29, 2012 at 2:00 PM

NAYPYITAW, Myanmar, March 29 (UPI) -- Officials say Myanmar's notoriously strict 50-year-old censorship laws may be a thing of the past with a pledge from the Ministry of Information to end to them.

Myanmar, which has some of the strictest censorship laws in the world, has not had a free press since 1962. While the censorship laws have recently loosened, censors still have the power to nix stories on sensitive subjects, such as the formation of labor unions.

Voice of America reported Ye Htut of the Ministry of Information said in a recent workshop on media freedom censorship laws would be scrapped by the end of the year, as the new government drafts media law to replace them.

"We want to maintain the stability and law and order in our country. In the previous government before 1962, there's a press freedom in our country," Htut said. "And instead of informing the general public, media themselves created a crisis."

While the end to censorship has created a buzz among journalists, they worry about the cutthroat competition that could ensue.

"It's going to be a bloodbath," said Ross Dunkley, publisher of the English language weekly, The Myanmar Times. "I mean, that's the absolute truth ... you get some [daily newspapers] up and running, then I figure you're going to see in the first year of the dailies at least 100 publications die."

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Myanmar pledges end to censorship laws