EMFA Urges Focus NE Management To Reinstate Sacked Employees

Guwahati, August 4: Guwahati; Electronic Media Forum Assam (EMFA) has urged the management of Focus NE, a multilingual satellite news channel to reinstate all its media employees, who were sacked arbitrarily under the 'cut-cost' formula recently.

It is understood that over 40 television journalists and other employees of Focus NE, earlier known as NETV, were either sacked or forced to resign as the management wanted to reduce the running expenditure of the media outlet.

The affected journalists and their well wishers in the media fraternity have already demonstrated today (Monday) in front of the news channel office at Ulubari in Guwahati.

The EMFA argues that the management should follow the norms endorsed by the country's labour laws while dismissing a media employee including a journalist.

Meanwhile, Journalists' Forum Assam (JFA) has appealed to the Union information and broadcasting ministry (I&B ministry) to frame some guidelines for all news channels (both free-to-air and payable) safeguarding the job security of media employees.

Moreover, the JFA has demanded a statutory wage board for regular pay hike and other due benefits for the television media employees across the country, as like their counterparts in the newspaper & news agencies of India.

It also emphasized on reconstituting the present Press Council as the Media Council of India with the inclusion of the electronic media at the earliest.