Entertainment - India;FWICE scraps signed agreement;face off continues

Sapna Nair

Just when the television industry thought the month long drama involving the stalemate between the broadcasters’ and workers’ associations was over, it reached a different level on November 20. The MoU, signed by the Core Committee of the producers’ association (comprising the Producers’ Guild, the Indian Motion Picture Producers’ Association and the Association of Motion Picture and Television Programme Producers of India) and the FWICE members has been scrapped by the workers.

According to Dheeraj Kumar of Creative Eye, hectic discussions were held between the workers’ associations and the FWICE all day yesterday. Certain worker unions, expressing disagreement and voicing grievances over the MoU, staged a protest outside the FWICE office.

“The FWICE has said that it will not honour the MoU signed yesterday as a result of the protest,” says Kumar. “This is a result of certain vested interests of some of the members and there is some kind of politics that’s happening,” informed Mukesh Bhatt, president, Producers’ Guild.



FWICE is the parent body of almost 22 workers’ bodies and had signed the agreement in the capacity of the representative body. “It is a very sad situation that they could scrap the MoU. This will once again lead to the situation becoming worse. We don’t want to react to this,” laments Kumar. He adds that the strike could hamper film production as well.

Now, producers are waiting for the unhappy workers’ unions and the FWICE to resolve the issue between them and have no intention to initiate a dialogue again. “The president and general secretary signed the agreement yesterday and if they had a problem, they should have expressed it at the meeting itself,” Bhatt asserted.

He adds, “They ought to stick to their commitment and honour the MoU.” If they fail to do so, he says, the producers associations will contemplate on taking them to court.

Broadcasters, at the time of filing this report, weren’t given an official intimation of this development. “We have no confirmation on this yet,” says Albert Almeida, business head, SET India. “The producers met us last evening (Nov 19) to explain the MoU to us and that’s the last we have heard from them,” he added.

Almeida said that the producers were to resume shooting in a few days but apparently, that will take a while with the protests by the various groups. “If news reports are to be believed, we will be back to square one,” he stated.