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Senator Loren Legarda on Sunday called for a comprehensive minimum
compensation and benefit standards for all working journalists “to
protect their rights and promote their welfare.”
“Journalists, by the very nature of their job,
are constantly exposed to risks and danger. It is but proper that
the State provides for their distinct needs and divergent
responsibilities to enable them to effectively exercise their role
in bringing public information,” she said.
Legarda, a former broadcast journalist, said she
filed Senate Bill No. 1398, called the Journalists’ Welfare and
Protection Act of 2007, to accomplish those objectives.
The bill seeks to provide journalists with
security of tenure and work-related benefits like overtime pay,
night-shift differential, hazard allowance, leave benefits, and
compulsory membership in the government’s State Insurance Fund.
A hazard allowance equivalent to 50 percent of
basic salary shall be given to frontline journalists assigned for at
least five days in one month in strife-torn areas, distressed or
isolated stations, disease-infested areas or in areas declared under
a state of calamity or emergency, which expose them to great danger,
radiation, volcanic activity or eruption.
The bill also seeks to entitle them with the
highest basic salary upon retirement, the right to
self-organization, and exemption from payment of travel tax,
terminal fees and other related charges when in the performance of
their jobs.
Journalists’ coordinating council pushed
Another key provision of Legarda’s bill seeks
to establish a five-man National Journalists’ Coordinating
Council, headed by the Press Secretary, to oversee and monitor the
implementation of all laws that promote the welfare of journalists.
Any person who will willfully interfere with,
restrain or coerce any journalist in the exercise of his duties
faces a fine of at least P50,000 and a jail term of five to 10
years.
-- Efren L. Danao
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