Curtains down on Sunaparant with 'relief package' to staffers
GOANEWS DESK, PANAJI | 30 July 2015 21:57 IST
Section of Sunaparant staff with publisher A M Gude & HR Manager G B Halkar
Curtains came down on a glorious history of Goa’s sole Konkani daily Sunaparant, today, with a healthy settlement reached between the management and 27 employees.
Sunaparant, started 28 years ago, will not be seen on the stands from 1 August.
“It’s really a sad day for us, but it was made inevitable due to cash flow constraints and not the expected support from the government to the single newspaper in Goa’s official language”, said A M Gude, the publisher.
He, along with HR Manager G B Halkar, spoke first to the Goa Union of Journalists and then individually to all the workers.
“They have taken all the legal measures in paying retrenchment benefits to the employees. But we will intervene in case any dispute arises in future”, said Sadguru Patil, the GUJ president.
According to Gude, the workers have been paid maximum what the law permits including retrenchment benefits, proportionate bonus, leave encashment, gratuity while they can also withdraw the provident fund.
“We have even settled their loans and paid them the balance amount so that they could leave tension-free. But we lost in the bargain the best manpower Goan media had”, said Gude.
According to Atish Naik, the GUJ secretary, the union decided to intervene in order to protect the interest of workers.
Though it was a gloomy environment in Sunaparant office today since a vibrant newspaper was closing down, the journalists and non-journalists appeared comparatively relieved with the financial package offered to them.
“This package will give us time to respond to the offers we get rather than desperately bagging for jobs in panic situation”, said Soyaru Velip, who started as a reporter and had reached the News Editor’s position.
Soyaru Velip, the name rings a dialect of Konkani which I enjoyed a lot. Konkani or any language is accompanied by its sets of dialects, which make it rich and stable and sweetens the language. The caste problems in Goa grew up before the language could grow up which did not happen in the case of Marathi. In India and Goa, politics plays a larger than life part and today the closure of Sunaparant could be attributed to politicizing of language issue by hyper strung activists and pseudo politicians. And, the 'over the hill' politicians who have nothing better to do than offer 'Kakay' to departed souls.
Thank you Sunaparant , it's staff and all the individuals who worked for this establishment all these years, past and present. It is indeed a sad day to see it shut down its presence, of course even more sad, since the the State Govt. did not support it much as stated above. Really a sad day in the history of our mother tongue and the state.
Once again thank you all who helped and worked selflessly to keep it going for 28 yrs.
Dev Borem Korum