Employees of newspapers and news agencies on Monday decided to organise nation-wide protest dharnas on October 14 against the Centre's "failure" to notify the recommendation of wageboard for journalists and non-journalists.

The decision to hold protest dharna in front of Congress office in Delhi and in the state capitals on coming Friday was taken by Confederation of Newspaper and News Agency Employees' Organisations (CNNAEO) at a meeting in the national capital.

Besides, CNNAEO general secretary M S Yadav, others who attended the meeting included AINEF leader Santosh Kumar and Madan Talwar, NUJI M D Gangwar and Rajendra Prabhu, IJU Madan Singh, UNI Workers Union leaders M L Joshi and A L Gawade, PTI Federation leaders Ajay Tyagi, Sanjay Sinha and Rajbir Singh, IFWJ Parmanand Pandey, Times of India Employees Union Roop Chand, Indian Express Employees Union leader C S Naidu and DUJ S K Pande.

"Prime minister Manmohan Singh had assured the media employees that he would do his duty (by implementing recommendations of G R Majithia wage boards recommendations. Why he is going back on his words?" Yadav said.

"Cabinet can always consider the issue. No one is preventing you to take decision," a bench of justices Dalveer Bhandari and Deepak Verma had said during last hearing on September 21 after it was mentioned that the cabinet has not been able to take a decision because of the pendency of the case before the apex court.

"So what prevents the government from doing its duty?" the CNNAEO leaders questioned.

Yadav accused the UPA government of being under influence of the owners of media organisations who are working overtime to deny hike in salary to journalists and non-journalists despite shooting inflation rate.

He warned the Congress party that if it continued with its "anti-workers" attitude, mediapersons would not hesitate to campaign against the party in the forthcoming assembly elections in the five states.

The CNNAEO general secretary urged UPA chief Sonia Gandhi and AICC general secretary Rahul Gandhi to come forward to safeguard the interests of journalists and non-journalists.

He also accused the opposition BJP and others of merely "paying lip service" to the cause of mediapersons and demanded them to pressurise the government to notify the wage boards report without any further delay.