(Seychelles News Agency) - Media practitioners have joined forces with the Red Cross Society of Seychelles (RCSS) and the Seychelles Media Commission to draft a document aimed at keeping members of the media safe while carrying out their duties.

This was done in a two-day training course held at the St.Louis District Administrator's office that started on Monday.

"We at RCSS have seen that while media practitioners are among the first group of people to arrive on a scene when there is an emergency or disaster, we have also noticed that much can be done to keep them safe while doing so," Marie-May Esparon, the secretary general, told SNA.

As the humanitarian organisation regularly holds training sessions on various topics such as First Aid, Esparon said RCSS sat with the Seychelles Media Commission to design the training session. The aim is to equip all media practitioners, from the technical crew and human resources officers, to journalists.

Among the topics covered in the training were psycho-social health, how to act safely in an emergency and steps that should be taken when faced with emergencies or disasters.

The group attending the first session also gave the facilitators an idea of each step they took in their respective media houses when covering such events. The contributions made will then be taken to the various media houses in the country as a basic template - on which they may provide feedback.

"They will then elaborate on what we have provided them, so that they may then use the points raised as Standard Operating Procedures (SOP)," said Esparon.

The media secretary of the Commission, Tessa Henderson, said the training was part of many it plans to hold for media practitioners in the country in the coming months.

"We have sessions that will be held with the Department of Risk and Disaster Management soon that we want media practitioners to attend not as an event they are covering, but as one to test their preparedness in such situations," she said.

Wills Sally, a camera operator from the Seychelles Broadcasting Corporation (SBC), said he was happy that he had attended the training  "as I am now aware that there are actions that I may take while on duty that could be dangerous for me and that I could have tackled in another way."

Meanwhile, the training organisers have also set up a group from the first cohort to continue working on the proposed SOPs. They will also present the draft copy to the Association of Media Practitioners of Seychelles (AMPS) for its input.

Local media houses are expected to have the document ready and handed over to the RCSS and SMC by February next year.