SHILLONG, AUG 19: Residents from Nongtrai village in East Khasi hills led by the KSU has decided to convene a people’s dorbar on Saturday to take decide on the alleged failure of the Lafarge Umiam Mining Pvt Ltd (LUMPL) to comply with the demand for job appointments of locals in the village.
They have lambasted the present executive committee of the Dorbar of Nongtrai village for deliberate attempt of making the agreement signed with the company as a ‘secret paper’.
According to them, despite an RTI has been filed with dorbar shnong for making public the said agreement since July 2, the headman Bnes Lingdar Lyngdoh has avoided giving his reply to the information sought till today.
“We have decided to convene a people’s dorbar meeting tomorrow at Nongtrai village to discuss on the matter and accordingly take a call on our next course of action,” KSU-Nongtrai unit general secretary Truelywell Lyngdoh told reporters at press conference on Friday
He said the decision was taken after the Lafarge Company failed to give any assurance with regards to the demand for providing employment to local people of the village.
The delegation has been demanding from the company to employ one each from the over 200 families in the village.
According to him, the company director had assured the delegation which had staged a sit-in-protest at Polo last week that a decision on the matter will be given today.
“Unfortunately today when we arrived here with the expectation to get some kind of assurance, the officials including the director of the company has refused to even meet the delegation,” Lyngdoh said.
Condemning the attitude of the company, the KSU leader said, “This shows that the company is just like the East India Company in the British time which exploited the natural wealth of the tribal in the name of development.”
Most of the residents have also refuted the claims of the company that it has around 547 workers employed in the mining sites and stated that refusal of the company to provide the documents of these employees itself indicated that there are many vacancies.
One of them said, “The Company has refused to produce the documents of its employees to the special committee constituted by the dorbar shnong, which is also an indication that majority of these employees are from outside of the state.”
Adding to this, Lyngdoh said, “We urged the state government to intervene into the matter by conducting an inspection in the mining sites and accordingly verify the documents of the employees.”
On the other hand, they have also threatened to file a petition with the state Chief Information Commissioner (CIC) against the dorbar shnong for its failure to provide information sought on the agreement.
“Despite the Company operating in the area for many years, till today we as residents of the village do not know what kind of agreement was entered with the dorbar shnong,” another resident of the village stated.
When asked, the KSU-NU general secretary however stated that the people in the past were not aware of their rights – which they should know about the agreement because the headman had only verbally told that first preference policy for job recruitment is one among the conditions in the agreement.
“We will soon file a complaint against his failure to provide the agreement signed with the company,” he said.-By Our Reporter
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