The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on Saturday said that the gazette notification on the 8th wage board award for journalists and workers of the press would be issued soon.
She also said that efforts were on to implement the new wage structures
for newsmen and employees in the newspaper industry.‘We will have one cabinet meeting before Eid-ul-Fitr. The cabinet can approve the proposal for the gazette notification of the 8th wage board award if the information ministry can place it in the cabinet by this time,’ she said at an iftar party factions of the Bangladesh Federal Union of Journalists and the Dhaka Union of Journalists hosted at the National Press Club.
The prime minister, however, gave an assurance that the new wage board award would be implemented as soon as possible — if not possible before Eid then in the second week of August.
The information minister, Hasanul Haq Inu, and journalists union leaders Iqbal Sobhan Chowdhury, Abdul Jalil Bhuiyan and Omar Faruk, among others, spoke.
The journalist leaders demanded that wages for journalists should be increased by at least a 100 per cent so that they could cope with goods price spiral.
The 8th wage board has recommended a 70 per cent wage increase on an average for journalists and employees of newspapers and news agencies.
The chairman of the wage board, Kazi Ebadul Haque, on June 30 handed over the recommendations to the information minister at the secretariat.
Inu earlier assured reporters that journalists and press workers would get revised wages from June.
-With New Age input
