Even as appreciating the Government of India (GoI) move to “offer” financial assistance to the families of Covid-19 victims among journalists to the tune of Rs 5 lakh each, Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), a Switzerland-based media rights body has urged that there is an urgent need to vaccinate all journalists on a priority basis and offer aid to all the victim families so that they can play their roles as frontline corona warriors after the doctors, nurses, other health and sanitation workers.
The GoI has offered Rs 5 lakh to to 67 families of journalists who died because of Covid-19 since March 2020. Several state governments have announced separate compensation to journalists. The Uttar Pradesh government has announced Rs 10 lakh to each of those who succumbed to the deadly disease. India has lost 229 journalists to the Covid disease, the highest among all other countries.
Noting this, PEC statement said, in all over 1,440 journalists around the world have died across the world due to Covid-19, expressing concern that India is at the top of the list of 76 corona affected countries, with 229 journo-casualties.
Other countries who have lost journalists because of the disease are Brazil (222 dead), Peru (161), Mexico (111), Colombia (64), Italy (56), Bangladesh (53), Ecuador (50), USA (49), Iran (32), United Kingdom (30), Argentina (28), Dominican Republic, Pakistan, Turkey (27 each), Russia (21), Venezuela (19), Bolivia (18), Panama (16), Spain, Ukraine (15 each), Egypt, Nepal (14 each), Honduras (11), Afghanistan, Nigeria, South Africa, France (9 each), etc.
"In May, at least 90 journalists succumbed to the virus infection in India, that is 3 per day. For the whole world, more than 180 journalists passed away due to Covid-19 in the month of May, that is 6 per day, a record number,” said Nava Thakuria, the country representative of PEC.
India lately lost journalists Mahesh Trivedi, Sagolsem Hemant, Basant Das, Sushil Sharma, R Jawahar, Junagari Ramesh, Prabudha Jagadev, Suresh Kumar Chaturvedi, HS Doreswamy, Vidyut P Mourya, Pradeep Kumar, Roshan Dias, Rajkumar Keswani, Choppadandi Mohan, Prakash Biyani, L Ramesh, Shivani Dua, among others.
PEC general secretary Blaise Lempen said, safety of media workers remains at risk in this crisis because they have to continue working on the ground, pointing out, India continues to be the worst affected country with the highest number of scribes died of novel corona virus infection aggravated aliments.
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