Guwahati, July 19 (TIWN): Journalists’ Forum Assam (JFA), while expressing grief over the increase of casualties among scribes due to novel corona virus infections in different parts of the country, urges the media houses to arrange the compulsory screenings for their employees.

The forum also requests every scribe to be cautious and careful in safeguarding themselves while reporting the pandemic.
Local media reports reveal that a senior television reporter from Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh succumbed to Covid-19 complications on 17 July 2020. Madhusudan Reddy, who was based in Kadapa, was hospitalized as he suffered from fever and breathlessness. He becomes the second media covid-19 casualty from Tirupati district after video journalist
M Parthasarathy, who died on 12 July undergoing medical attentions. Earlier, three Orissa journalists (Simanchal Panda, K.Ch Ratnam and Priyadarshi Patnaik) succumbed to the virus infections. New Delhi based scribe Tarun Sisodia  killed himself undergoing treatment at All India Institute of Medical Sciences.  The printer-publisher of Asomiya Khabar (Rantu Das) died of heart-failure at a Guwahati  hospital, 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 earlier died of Covid-19 complications.
The forum in a statement expressed annoyances that over one hundred Guwahati based media employees, working for news papers, news channels and news portals, as corona-warriors  turned positive for the virus infection. But shockingly the worrisome development has not been properly reported by most of the city based media outlets.
“Need not to remind that it is the duty and responsibility for newspapers, news channels, digital outlets to report correctly about the Covid-19 warriors within the media fraternity,” said JFA president Rupam Barua and secretary Nava Thakuria adding that they continue playing an important role along with the doctors, nurses, sanitation workers, police personnel, etc during the pandemic.