Guwahati, May 14: All Assam Media Employees Federation (AAMEF) welcomes the
Supreme Court’s directive to probe into the Saradha multi-crore scam
in Assam, Pachim Bangla, Odisha, Tripura etc by the Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI) and appealed to the investigative agency to
consider in compensating the media employees who used to work for the
Saradha owned media outlets.
AAMEF, in a statement issued in Guwahati, argues that over 1000 media
employees in eastern India, who worked for newspapers & news channels
owned by Saradha group of companies, lost their jobs suddenly after
the collapse of the group in April 2013. Most of them even did not
receive their due salaries for two to three months at the time of
closing of their respective media outlets.
“In Assam, over 300 media employees including journalists were
working for Saradha owned Sakalbela, a Bengali daily and Seven
Sisters’ Post, an English daily. When both the newspapers were shut
down following the arrest of Saradha chief Sudipta Sen last year, the
employees were yet to receive three months’ salaries. They are still
to get the salaries,” said an AAMEF statement.
AAMEF now expresses hope that the CBI probe would bring the entire
issue of financial irregularities relating to the non-banking
financial companies into the logical end and be successful in
recovering the properties of the said group for compensating the
investors.
“We demand for due amount of money for each and every employee of the
Saradha owned newspaper and television channels. With their
outstanding salaries, we also raise voices for three months
compensatory salaries to them,” added the statement.
AAMEF also asked the concerned media employees to extend all possible
cooperation to CBI in unearthing the major financial scam of the
country. The umbrella organization of various Assam based media
organizations also appealed to the State Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi
for taking personal interest in compensating the media employees at
the earliest.(SP News)
