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The President of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Chief Chris Isiguzo says the union is determined more than ever to achieve a salary structure for media practitioners in the country.
To this end, Isiguzo assured that the NUJ would engage other stakeholders in the media industry to ensure that an enhanced salary package was achieved within the life of the 9th National Assembly (NASS).
The national president disclosed this on Tuesday in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Enugu.
He said that the union had fashioned out ways to interface with the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) and the Radio Television, Theater and Arts Workers Union (RATTAWU).
He said that the prevailing circumstance where media workers were either paid meagre salaries or left without salaries every month end was unacceptable to the union.
“The issue of enhanced media salary is one of our major agenda. It is one of the foundational challenges facing the union and media practice in Nigeria. It is important that we engage other stakeholders like the NBC, NGE and RATTAWU to work out something better and take the request to the NASS,” he said.
Isiguzo said that the union along with the other stakeholders would commence the process as soon as the 9th NASS was inaugurated in June.
The NUJ president said that the safety of journalists in the country was of utmost importance to the union.
He said that journalists could not continue to lament of their safety in the country while nothing was done about it.
Isiguzo said that he had led a delegation to President Muhammadu Buhari during which the leadership of the union had a heart-to-heart discourse with the president on the issue.
“President Buhari has assured us that the Federal Government will work out more fashionable ways journalists will freely relate with the government. Ordinarily, we are not supposed to be institutional partners. We are supposed to serve as a check on the other. However, we are also stakeholders and must be carried along in the scheme of things”.
“This will enable us see how things work in our system; where they are going wrong, we advice, if they do well, we commend,” Isiguzo said. (NAN)
