The Press Club of Hyderabad has requested the State government to provide better healthcare facilities to working journalists, particularly those contracting the coronavirus infection and facing problems both in hospitalisation and treatment.
In a letter addressed to Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar on Saturday, president of the Press Club S. Vijay Kumar Reddy stated that about 15 working journalists had succumbed to COVID in the last 20 days after contracting it in the field while discharging their duties in dissemination of information. The working journalists were facing problems in timely detection of infection and treatment.
Stating that there was a need to provide separate queue facility for journalists at the COVID testing centres both in Hyderabad and districts and also allot beds in the event of their contracting the infection and hospitalisation gets inevitable he said there were several instances of infected journalists facing hardship in getting a hospital bed.
Working journalists were not recognised as frontline workers for vaccination.
