The sudden outbreak of the deadly Coronavirus aka COVID-19 has brought the whole world to a standstill. With the number of infected increasing at an alarming rate per day, shoots of web series, television shows and films all across the globe have been cancelled until further notice. This has made a major impact on daily wage employees and the production team. After cinema-related bodies in India, Netflix has now come up with a $100m relief fund for those unemployed due to Coronavirus. The chief content officer of the digital entertainment platform, Ted Sarandos, in a statement announced about the relief fund and told that it will support employees including electricians, carpenters and drivers.
“The Covid-19 crisis is devastating for many industries, including the creative community. Almost all television and film production has now ceased globally – leaving hundreds of thousands of crew and cast without jobs. These include electricians, carpenters and drivers, many of whom are paid hourly wages and work on a project-to-project basis. This community has supported Netflix through the good times, and we want to help them through these hard times, especially while governments are still figuring out what economic support they will provide,” Sarandos told.
Sarandos further told that the employees are Netflix's backbone and expressed pleasure while saying that the platform is able to help them out during a crisis. “What’s happening is unprecedented. We are only as strong as the people we work with and Netflix is fortunate to be able to help those hardest hit in our industry through this challenging time,” Sarandos added.
The statement was issued a while after reports stated that nearly 120,000 film industry workers lost their jobs because of Coronavirus.
(Source: The Guardian)
