Bangladesh journalists becoming ‘media workers’ from ‘labourers’ in new law

The government has provisionally approved the draft of a new law resetting the conditions of service of journalists and changing their description to ‘media workers’ from ‘labourers’.

The cabinet cleared the draft ‘Media Employees Act (Conditions of Service) 2018’ at a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the Secretariat on Monday.

Some parts of the Newspaper Employees (Conditions of Service) Act of 1974 were contradictory to the Labour Act, Cabinet Secretary Mohammad Shafiul Alam told reporters after the meeting.

Later, the journalists’ service was brought under the Labour Act and they were defined as ‘labourer’

“The media employees will be termed ‘media workers’, not ‘labourers’, once the new law is passed,” Shafiul said.

The Newspaper Employees Act had fixed conditions of service, financial issues and other facilities for journalists, and press workers and employees. 

The government passed the Labour Act in 2006, including the services of journalists, and press workers and employees in it.

The new draft law defines fulltime journalists, and crew, administrative officials and employees of newspapers, or workers of printing presses owned by registered newspapers as ‘media workers’, according to  Shafiul.

Fulltime media employees assigned to broadcast, producers, script writers, artists, designers, cartoonists, camerapersons, audio, video and image editors, sound recorder, camera assistants, graphic designers and others involved in broadcasting have been termed ‘crew’ in the draft law.

Read details in Bangla