It is now official. Employees of Mojo TV, which created a sensation in the Telugu electronic media circles for over a year with its mobile journalism, issued a statement that the channel is being wound up.
According to the statement, the new management of the channel assured to give three months’ of salary to all the employees and also to accommodate them in other channels depending on the requirement.
But what was shocking in the statement that the “working journalists” of Mojo TV, blamed it on former chief executive officer of popular news channel TV9 V Ravi Prakash and former CEO of Mojo TV Revathi for the sorry state of affairs in the channel.
According to them, Mojo TV was founded by Ravi Prakash and his associates from the money siphoned off from TV9 illegally.
“We all thought Mojo TV was being run from out of the profits of TV9. But now, we have realised that it was established on a fraudulent foundation. We should have suspected the foul play when we were paid salaries in cash, instead of through bank transactions,” the statement said.
It also further alleged that the ex-CEO of Mojo TV had swindled Rs 5 crore money to be paid to the staff towards three months’ salary.
After Ravi Prakash’s scam was exposed, the ex-CEO of Mojo TV approached the new management of TV9 and admitted the fraud in launching Mojo TV.
She said she would convince the staff to wind up the channel by paying them three months’ salary.
“Accordingly, she collected Rs 5 crore from the management but did not inform the same to the staff. When the deadline ended, the management insisted us to quit the jobs. When we demanded three months’ salary, the management clearly told us our accounts had already been settled through the ex-CEO. It was a shock to us,” the statement said.
Finally, the management showed a lot of concern to us and agreed to pay us our dues, the staff said.