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De Lima seeks hazard pay, additional insurance coverage for media practitioners
Senator Leila de Lima has filed a bill requiring media companies to provide hazard pay and additional insurance benefits for members of the press on field assignments.
Senate Bill 1860 mandates disability benefits worth P350,000 and death benefits amounting to P300,000. It seeks P200,000 reimbursement for actual medical costs for injuries sustained during coverage.
De Lima also proposed that the Social Security System and the Government Service Insurance System create and offer a special insurance program for freelance journalists, or those who pursue journalism for any publication without being regularly employed by legitimate media entities.
Media practitioners deployed in “difficult, strife-torn and embattled areas” should be compensated with tax-free hazard pay equivalent to at least 25 percent of their gross monthly salary for the duration of such deployment, according to the senator.
In pushing for the bill’s passage, De Lima cited the number of attacks against journalists and other media workers since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in June 2016.
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A total of 85 cases of attacks, including nine killings, against the media took place between June 30, 2016 and May 1, 2018, according to the joint report of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), National Union of Journalists of the Philippines (NUJP), Philippine Press Institute (PPI), and Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ).
The report released in May said Duterte “has unleashed much more violence against the autonomy of the press than has been seen” since the end of the Marcos dictatorship in 1986, making the practice of journalism “an even more dangerous endeavor.”
“In light of the dangerous circumstances confronted by journalists, it is imperative they be provided adequate mandatory hazard pay and commensurate insurance,” De Lima, a staunch Duterte critic, said.
De Lima has been in police detention since February last year on charges she allowed the illegal drug trade to proliferate inside the New Bilibid Prison when she was Justice secretary in exchange for funds for her senatorial campaign in 2016.
She has denied the allegations and accused the Duterte administration of political persecution. —Virgil Lopez/VDS, GMA News