Congress leader and MP Komatireddy Venkat Reddy today demanded that Telangana Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao recognise the journalists of the state as frontline warriors, and that the CM take steps for the allocation of special beds for the journalists in the hospitals of the state.
He wrote an open letter to the CM outlining his demands.
In the letter, the MP demanded that Rs 25 lakh each be provided to the families of the "100 journalists" who had lost their lives in the Covid-19 pandemic.
Reddy told the CM that 15 states across the country had already included journalists in the category of frontline warriors, and added that special beds had also been set aside for the journalists so that they could avail themselves of treatment without any hassles or delays.
The demand is one that has been made several times since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic last year hit the scribe community hard.
Just some days ago, several journalist associations in Telangana, including the TUSWJ and the IJU, who were concerned by the rising Covid-19 cases and an increase in fatalities, urged the state government to
recognise journalists as frontline warriors.
Meanwhile, the Telangana Press Academy recently announced that it would offer
financial assistance of Rs 2 lakh each to the families of the journalists who had succumbed to Covid-19.