HETAUDA: Govinda Acharya, member of the Press Council-Nepal, said that media houses would not be provided with government subsidies and advertisements if they failed to implement the Working Journalists’ Act.

Speaking at an interaction entitled ‘’Status of Media Outside the Capital, Implementation of the Working Journalists’ Act and Journalists Code of Conduct’ here yesterday, he stressed on the need to implement the provisions of the Act of providing minimum wage to working journalists and appointment letters to them.

Acharya also said media houses that would not claim for subsidies and advertisements provided by the government would not be forced to follow the Act.

Working journalists based in the district who were attending the function complained of media houses in the district of not providing appointment letters and the allocated minimum salary as per the Act to the journalists.

The journalists also said that owners of media houses would threaten them of firing from their jobs when they requested them to provide the minimum salary allocated by the Working Journalists ‘Act.

The participants of the interaction underlined the need for effective implementation of the Act and expressed concern over the Act not being implemented even after several months of its endorsement.

The interaction was presided over by Ram Mani Dahal, president of Federation of Nepali Journalists (FNJ), Makwanpur Branch.