TGNP MISTREATS JOURNALISTS AT GENDER FESTIVAL 2011 IN DAR

Miss Lilian Liundi, the TGNP Communication Officer

AS per invitation, journalists turned to the Gender Festival-2011 at TGNP Mabibo in Dar es Salaam from 13th September, 2011 to September 16th, , but were disappointed by the way they were treated by Kenny Ngomuo-TGNP, Lilian Liundi-TGNP and Ananilea Nkya-TAMWA.
In fact these three people are very dangerous to the media fraternity. They are the ones who were there to mistreat journalists.
TGNP should take note of these people if they want to continue working in harmony with journalists in Tanzania.
Once journalists are invited to attend any of the programmes, it is essential, as a matter of hospitality, to be paid some allowance for taking their time on the matter.
But alas, on Friday September 16th September, 2011 during the closing ceremony last week, things turned ugly as journalists left TGNP offices disappointed, when Lilian Liundi, the Communications Officer broke out news that no allowance was available to them, as per agreement prior to the festival.
Lilian, with no respect at all to the journalists said that no allowance was available to journalists from Dar es Salaam, unless they produced cuttings of their reporting of the festival events, while other participants, including upcountry journalists and gays were being paid on their presence.
She said: “You are not entitled to any allowance unless you bring your cuttings, showing how you have reported the event.”
This is a disgrace to the journalism profession, showing how journalists are being mistreated by TGNP and her partners.
Please make sure that journalists are paid their due whenever they attend any of your functions and if you cannot pay them, please do not invite them at all.
Due to act of disregard to journalists, we have decided that no journalist will ever attend any of the functions conducted by TGNP in future and editors should take note of that.
Journalists are not there to be used to foster TGNP campaigns and then ignored in that manner.
According to reports, most journalists who had been reporting the event fo four consecutive days, left TGNP offices without having any food as nothing was served to them, who were there since morning.
Time has passed when journalists were used as mere tools to send messages through, just to be ignored like that.
Journalists must be respected due to their profession so that they could perform their duties diligently.
I think this message will be heeded in order to have a good working relationship with TGNP and other such organisations in future.