JFA insists on mass Covid-19 screening for media employees

Guwahati: Journalists’ Forum Assam (JFA), while expressing serious
concern over increasing number of city-based media employees infected
with novel corona virus in the last few days, urges all media houses
to go for mass Covid-19 screening for their employees including the
working journalists.

Days back, a printer-publisher of Hindi newspaper Nishpaksha Samachar
Jyoti tested positive for Covid-19. City-based Prahlad Kumar Agarwal
thus became the first corona virus infected media person of the
State. Unconfirmed reports claim that around ten media employees
working in the city lately tested positive for Covid-19.

“We are now worried as our health minister Dr Himanta Biswa Sarma
himself stated in public comment that journalists of two news channels
tested positive for Covid-19,” said a statement issued by JFA
president Rupam Barua and secretary Nava Thakuria.

The forum also appeals to the State health minister to facilitate all
media houses to organize mass screening camps for their valued
employees at the earliest. After all, the media persons are playing
the role Covid-19 warriors with discriminating necessary information
in the time of a pandemic, it concluded.