Producers Guild of India, IFTPC & FWICE set up relief fund for daily wage workers
The Producers Guild of India (Guild), Indian Film and Television Producers Council (IFTPC) and Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) have joined forces to establish a relief fund to provide financial assistance for the industry’s daily wage workers who are out of work due to the ongoing pandemic.
The association announced the news in a joint press statement, “The Producers Guild of India (Guild) and Indian Film & Television Producers Council (IFTPC) announced that they would partner with the Federation of Western India Cine Employees (FWICE) to provide financial assistance to daily wage workers in the industry who have been most impacted by the shutdown.
Producers Guild of India (Guild) and Indian Film & Television Producers Council (IFTPC) had joined hands to set up a Relief Fund for daily wage workers affected by the production shutdown owing to the COVID-19 epidemic.
In a significant development, the FWICE has come forward to support this fundraising initiative of Guild and IFTPC by offering to set up a transparent and efficient mechanism to disburse these funds to daily wage workers most impacted by the shutdown, especially those who have no other financial assistance or support available to them from any other source, ensuring that the financial assistance will be made to daily wage workers only through direct bank payments.
The first tranche of funds raised by Guild and IFTPC will be made available to FWICE for disbursement to daily wage workers in the first week of April 2020, and both Guild and IFTPC will aggressively continue their efforts to raise funds for this purpose.”
Ashok Dubey, FWICE General Secretary, told The Indian Express why providing such support is important, “Daily wage workers like spot-boys, light-men, setting-workers earn around Rs. 800-1000 per day, and they manage to get this kind of work for 12 to 15 days in a month, not more than that. They manage to earn between Rs. 12,000 to Rs. 15,000 per month. Background dancers, if they manage to get a song, and if they shoot for two days, earn Rs 4,500 per day. They manage to get work for 3-4 days in a month. Same goes with junior artistes, male junior actors get Rs. 1000 and female junior actors get Rs. 900 per day, for a 12 hours shift. Now, because of the lockdown, none of these workers have any work, and they do not have any alternate income source.”, adding that, “We have 5 lakh workers registered with us and they are in different parts of the city. While we have started distributing ration to the employees who live close by, it is impossible to reach the ones who live in places like Nalasopara and Virar. So through these various initiatives, they will receive money directly in their bank accounts.”
