Improved working conditions, welfare for journalists

By Innocent Anguyo Alia and Sampaul Nakhaima 

The information ministry is set to amend the Press and Journalists Act in a move to improve the welfare and working conditions of journalists, the ministry’s director, Simon Mayende has said.

The proposed amendment will be done alongside consultation with media owners, journalists and civil society organizations.

Mayende made the revelation while speaking at the pan-African Platform on Access to Information (APAI) declaration workshop mid this week at Hotel Africana Kampala,

The improved changes in the Act will aim at shielding journalists against exploitation by their employers.

“Many foreign and local owned media in the country especially those upcountry use journalists as ends to their means,” Mayende explained.

The amendment will harmonize the demands of journalists and media owners’ desire to make profits.

“Most media houses pay their journalists poorly and yet give huge bonuses to the advertising personnel forgetting that it’s the content produced by the journalists that markets the media,” he said.

The proposed amendment also seeks to establish a new and stronger umbrella body that can bargain for better welfare for journalists.

Uganda Journalists Association (UJA) and Uganda Journalists Union (UJU) are locked in a bitter ideological contention that is deterring their ability to push for demands of journalist, Mayende observed.

“The proposed amendment will not abolish UJA and UJU. Instead it will seek to merge them.”

The Press and Journalists Act was promulgated in 1995 to professionalize the media in Uganda. The proposed changes will affect both private and public media.

The workshop was organized by Africa Freedom of Information Centre (AFIC), a local charity promoting freedom of access to information in Uganda.

The APAI Declaration was adopted at the end of the first pan-African conference on Access to Information held in Cape Town, South Africa in September 2011.

Gilbert Sendugwa, the coordinator AFIC said the right to information is a universal and fundamental human right whose enjoyment is still challenged in most African countries.

He advised government to proactively disseminate information to the public as a means of fuelling rapid social, economic and political development of Uganda.