JFA mourns demise of two media corona-warriors
NJ Thakuria,Guwahati: Journalists’ Forum Assam (JFA) expresses shock and profound grief over the demise of two media corona-warriors in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh within a few hours. The media forum urges every scribe to be cautious and careful in safeguarding themselves and their families while performing their duties during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Media reports confirm that Tirupati based video journalist M Parthasarathy (46 years old) died of Covid-19 complications on 12 July
2020. Worked for a Telugu news channel, the senior camera person was suffering from fever and throat related ailments and admitted to a
Covid-19 hospital of Andhra Pradesh, where he breathed his last on Sunday evening.
Earlier a senior journalist from Gajapati locality in Orissa (Odisha) died of novel corona virus infection at a Bhubaneswar hospital same
day. A gentleman by nature, K.Ch Ratnam (72) worked for the Hyderabad based Telugu daily Eenadu. On the previous day, another Oriya
journalist (Priyadarshi Patnaik) succumbed to Covid-19 complications in Bhubaneswar.
New Delhi based scribe Tarun Sisodia, who worked for Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar and tested positive for Covid-19, killed himself undergoing treatment at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) on 6 July. The printer-publisher of Asomiya Khabar (Rantu Das) died of heart-failure at a Guwahati hospital on 3 July, who later tested positive for Covid-19.
Chennai based news videographer E Velmurugan, Chandigarh based news presenter Davinder Pal Singh, Hyderabad based television scribe Manoj Kumar, Agra based print journalist Pankaj Kulashrestha and Kolkata based photojournalist Ronny Roy also died of Covid-19 complications.
“A compulsory Covid-19 screening of all media employees by the respective managements becomes the need of the hour to prevent the
pandemic outbreak,” said a statement issued by JFA president Rupam Barua and secretary Nava Thakuria adding that State chief minister
Sarbananda Sonowal and health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma should support the initiative at the earliest.
Lately one hundred Guwahati based media employees, working for newspapers, news channels and news portals, were infected with the virus as they continue working as corona-warriors after the on-duty doctors, nurses, sanitation workers, police personnel, etc to contain
the outbreak of Covid-19, but shockingly the worrisome development has not yet properly reported by the mainstream media outlets.
