EIMPCC members meet central ministers

An eight-member team of the Eastern India Motion Pictures and Cultural Confederation (EIMPCC), led by its vice-chairperson, Sanghamitra Chaudhuri, went to Delhi on Wednesday to meet the information & broadcasting minister Prakash Javadekar, labour welfare minister Santosh Kumar Gangwar and minister of health Dr Harsh Vardhan.
Among others things, they asked the I&B ministry to make it mandatory for multiplexes to allot prime time slots to regional Bengali films, which cannot be pulled down if the box office registers 40% ticket sales.The share of revenue should be 50% for producers till at least the third week, as regional films tend to pick up slowly. They also demanded that commissioned programmes should be started again in Doordarshan. Commissioned programmes in private channels should also be given to all producers irrespective of political contacts. “We want to invite investors for miniplexes with a centralised online ticketing system in various districts of West Bengal so that the exhibitor section becomes strong for Bengali films. Labour welfare minister Santosh Kumar Gangawar promised us pension schemes for our cine workers and to bring in a new bill for uniform minimum wage, which will be implemented all over the country. Our technicians and artistes will be benefitted by the same. Health insurance from Rs 2 to Rs 50 lakh will be issued to our cine workers under Rashtriyo Ayog Niti. All these schemes and benefits will be provided to EIMPCC members in near future,” said Sanghamitra, adding “We want the cine workers and labourers who are part of this unorganised sector to get benefited. That’s why we went to Delhi to seek help from the central government.”
The other group members who went to Delhi along with Sanghamitra are Susmita Sen, Brindabon Ghosh, Debasish Sikdar, Sarmistha Ghosh, Tanmay De, Soumyajit Ganguly and Amit Halder.