Skip to content Skip to navigation

JFA urges PCI to intervene on Guwahati newspaper-distribution impasse

Journalists' Forum Assam (JFA) has expressed utter dismay at the prolonged strike of newspaper hawkers in Guwahati since February 16 and urged the Press Council of India (PCI) to intervene on the matter as the agitators have directly implicated on people's right to get essential information.

Taking queue from the PCI chairman Justice Markandey Katju's comment on Arunachal's recent media-deadlock, following the conflict between the Itanagar authority and media persons, that the suspension of newspapers is 'not in public interest', the JFA pointed out that similar situation is now prevailing in Assam as the hawkers have neither distributed nor allowed others to do the same inside Guwahati city for consecutive six days.

"The newspaper agents and hawkers in the city can resolve their differences on financial shares of earnings even without affecting the distribution of newspapers to the households. Without insisting on continuous strike any more, the newspaper hawkers should pursue their demands through other peaceful democratic means," said a JFA statement.

The conflict between the newspaper agents and hawkers in the city turned worse as the latter had engaged in physical assaults with some youths who were employed by the agents to distribute morning newspapers to the city dwellers. The statement, issued today by JFA president Rupam Barua and secretary Nava Thakuria, also appealed to the owners of Guwahati based newspaper houses to look into the matter critically and help the conflict resolved at the earliest. Otherwise, the unavailability of morning dailies for day after day might result in a serious negative implication on the local media enterprise.

The Assam based scribe body also got astonished that the unavailability of morning newspapers for almost a week has not instigated the city based readers to raise voices against the deadlock. Shockingly few people have talked about the matter in public that too with little worries only indicates that the Guwahatians might have fulfilled their need of daily news inputs from the local news channels and portals.

Insisting on due benefits to the newspaper hawkers, the JFA has also maintained its old demands for implementing the statutory wage boards in all newspaper houses of the State which recommend due salary and other facilities to the journalists and non-journalist media employees.

"Offering due financial benefits to the employees under the wage board recommendations should inspire the media workers to perform their duties in a better way," said the JFA statement adding, "It would also help the media group owners to earn enormous goodwill from the esteem readers, which is seemingly decreasing in the recent past, for a sustained growth of the media enterprises in Assam."

Author info

Nava Thakuria's picture

Senior journalist based in Guwahati.

Add new comment

Random Stories

Int'l conference on northeast at Jamia

28 Jan 2015 - 12:35pm | Indrajit Das
An International Conference on '‘Reimagining India’s North East: Narratives, Networks and Negotiations" is scheduled on February 4-6 at Jamia Millia Islamia university, New Delhi. Prominent scholars...

Army initiatives draw applause in Namrup

23 Feb 2018 - 1:05pm | Akshaya Pranab Kalita
NAMRUP: In yet another initiative that brings the commoner more closer to them, Army have started motivating the youths in many area providing the unemployed lots with career counseling to shape...

Boro Somaj hailedautonomous council creation

8 Jan 2016 - 6:20pm | Hantigiri Narzary
Dularai Boro Somaj and Bodo Writers Academy have welcomed the chief minister’s announcement of creation of autonomous council for the Bodo Kachari people living outside the Bodoland Territorial Area...

Tension in Khetri

25 Jul 2008 - 9:59pm | swapan
An electricity post was damaged due to the excavation work going on for construction of the widening process of the proposed four lane road in front of the Khetri Police Station, near Guwahati today...

Other Contents by Author

It’s shocking to report that a number of Guwahati-based scribes and RTI (right to information) activists have been facing interrogation and even arrest by Assam chief minister’s special vigilance cell following the allegations of Sewali Devi Sharma, the prime accused in Rs 105 crore State council of educational research and training (SCERT) scam, as being blackmailers to her in different occasions. The arrestees include a female reporter (identified as Pujamoni Das alias Honey Kashyap, who reportedly took a large volume of money from Ms Sharma) along with a satellite news channel reporter named Bhaskarjoti Hazarika.  RTI activists namely Rabijit Gogoi (who pretended to be a...
Can we imagine a world of zero poverty, zero unemployment, and zero carbon emissions with a new approach in post-corona economics! Ask Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus and he will answer in the affirmative. The university professor turned revolutionary banker believes that the human race should not only dream about a safer world by reducing global warming, wealth concentration and unemployment, but also work in that direction with personal and collective capacities. In his latest book titled ‘A World of Three Zeros’, Prof Yunus proposes a new economic system focusing on every human being as an entrepreneur in the making. He believes that humans are not born to work only for...
Guwahati: Assam is all set to host first sustainable financial working group (SFWG) meeting and Youth 20 inception meeting as part of India's year-long G20 presidency, where it is meticulously chalked out various tour programs that would help in promoting the State’s rich biodiversity and socio-cultural heritage in international arena. The authorities have completed the preparation to welcome the foreign delegates to the State. Guwahati is adorned with digital wall painting, thematic gates, flags of G 20 countries, LED cut-outs, standees, hoarding, etc as part of branding and beautification. The government has also completed the arrangement for the visiting delegates to places of...
Guwahati: India observes National Press Day on 16 November with an aim to pay tributes to everyone who contributed to the growth of print media along with its mentor & watchdog the Press Council of India (PCI). Moreover, it’s also an occasion for the practicing media persons to introspect seriously over their noble profession where it has been heading in the post-Covid-19 pandemic era. Since its inception and functioning, the PCI continues to symbolize a free and responsible press in the largest democracy in the world. Among all press or media councils, functioning in various countries, the PCI is recognised as a unique entity that exercises authority over the media and also safeguards...
Participating in a debate on satellite television or digital channels needs some homeworks to make the deliberations short and clear. Unless you face an arrogant anchor and unruly participants, the experience in talk shows normally emerges as an intriguing one. It happened to me, as I had recently participated in a digital media discussion on the pertinent issue of National Register of Citizens  (NRC) in Assam, where the prime guest was none other than the immediate past State NRC coordinator Hitesh Dev Sarma. The talk show host Dikshit Sharma put the questions in a clever way so that the issue comes alive and my part was just to interpret Dev Sarma’s version for clarity to the valued...
Guwahati: It was an amazing experience to attend the foundation day of a 25 year old press club in central Assam on a lazy Sunday, where a number of senior citizens along with rural scribes and novice journalists were waiting to listen to my speech. It’s easier to address a journalist’s meet- where we can discuss many issues with liberties, but while the audience includes respected senior citizens and young people, it becomes a difficult task to speak to them together. First, the question that arises, how much should I highlight the eroding credibility of the mainstream media around India in general and Assam in particular and secondly what may be the role of social (alternate/digital)...
Guwahati: A year-long celebration of 100 years of sports journalism in Assam begins coinciding on the day while the first ever news related to a football competition is published in Asomiya (a weekly news magazine mentored by Chandra Kumar Agarwala) on 1  July 1923. Assam Sports Journalists Association (ASJA), which is affiliated with the Sports Journalists Federation of India (a national affiliate of the International Sports Press Association), has taken the lead in celebrating the occasion that will culminate on 1  July next year. On Saturday, flags for ASJA and the centenary celebration were hoisted by ASJA’s founder president Balendra Mohan Chakraborty and his successor...
Reactions from the public (sensitive readers) against a news item in any newspaper (also news channel) are usual in India, but outrages against the mainstream media outlets in digital platforms for not covering a particular issue is definitely an unusual phenomenon. The north-eastern state of Assam witnessed such public fury against some of the editor-journalists for avoiding press conferences by opposition political parties where they targeted the state chief minister for his family’s alleged land scam. The organized public uproar in the alternate media was so intense that the celebrity editor-journalists of Assam did not dare to clarify their positions. They preferred to avoid the...
Hyderabad: The Indian Journalists Union (IJU) has strongly condemned the incident of assault on a Manipur journalist and urged the state chief minister, N. Biren Singh, to book the culprits under the law. The National Union of Subscribes also wished for an early recovery of Elangbam Rameshwar, who works as a Thoubal correspondent for the Naharolgi Thoudang regional daily newspaper, which is published from Imphal. Local media hinted that the handiwork was masterminded by some Congress workers in the Thoubal locality of the north-eastern state, who were attacked by a group of 20 to 25 masked men in the morning hours on 24 October. The rural reporter faced assault at his residence in the...
Hyderabad: The national executive committee meeting of Indian Journalists Union (IJU), which concluded on Sunday in the capital city of Telangana, discussed various burning issues concerning the practitioners of journalism across India and emphasized on effective safety & security to journalists, reforms in Press Council of India (PCI) and basic minimum facilities to the media fraternity sustaining the spirit under freedom of the press to serve the largest democracy on the globe. Chaired by IJU president K Sreenivas Reddy, the two-day meeting held at Tourism Plaza in Begumpet locality expressed serious concern over killings of journalists by anti-social elements and filing of cases...