Parliament journalists cry to Government; We are poor, come to our rescue

A group of journalists who operate from parliament under their umbrella body; Uganda Parliamentary Press Association (UPPA) have cried out to parliament and government over impecuniousness resulting from very little pay in their profession.

The Parliament journalists, led by their chairperson Moses Mulondo made the alarm while meeting Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga on various issues including; expressing their gratitude regarding her recovery, threats on media freedom in Uganda, and the appalling state of journalists’ welfare in Uganda yesterday.

It is during the meeting that these implored the speaker to help them activate a Shs500,000 monthly pay from government using tax payers' money to enable them survive the stinging economy.

In a statement later, Mulondo claimed that they arrived at their resolution after putting on consideration journalist’s poor remuneration from their bosses.

“Most of the journalists in the country are actually not staff but freelance journalists who are paid per story they publish/broadcast. This category of journalists is in the worst state, even in the big media houses. Even when one has been very hardworking throughout the month, it is a common occurrence for someone to find as low as 80,000 on his/her bank account as their monthly earning,” Mulondo lamented.

“Imagine how such a person has to make ends meet with the high cost of living. That person has to buy food, pay rent and if he or she has a family and pay school fees and other family expenses.  Whereas the International Labour standards are that an employee should work for 8 hours, Uganda journalists on average work for 13 hours and they are not paid overtime allowances,” he added.

Mulondo and group now want parliament, government, civil society, development partners, media scholars, and media managers to come to the rescue of journalists.

“We also have a problem of irrational salary disparities between top media managers and the journalists who do the donkey work. There is also a mentality of Uganda’s media managers that for one to get a reasonably high pay they need to be editors yet in Europe and USA a big number of reporters/writers are paid even better than editors. And it is not practically possible to have many editors/managers because those positions are very few,” Mulondo said.