[ Karyir Riba ]
TEZU, 19 Mar: The Lohit district unit of the All Arunachal Pradesh Workers Union (AAPWU) staged a hunger strike in the office premises of Tamchi Kusuk Enterprise (TKE) in Highway Camp, Demwe, on Saturday, to protest against the enterprise for not paying wages to the workers engaged in its ongoing highway project, even after the clearance of the bill by the NHIDCL.
The AAPWU alleged that TKE and its sub-contractor, Ankur Enterprise (AE), have not paid wages to their workers for the last nine months, and that the supervisors of AE had also manhandled the workers when they asked to be paid.
AAPWU unit president Yalum Ama said, “We had earlier requested both the enterprises on two instances via letters on 3.03.22 and 5.03.22. However, since even after three weeks we did not receive any response from them, we were left with no choice but to protest against their atrocity towards their workers. They have not only violated the labour law and the industry law but also gone against the payment of wages act and human rights. In order to fight for the rights of the workers, we had to conduct the hunger strike today and have stopped the work on the project.”
The affected workers said that not being paid for their work for the last nine months has created a lot of trouble for them. “It has become difficult for us to feed our families and ourselves. Shops have stopped giving us grocery items on credit as we haven’t been able to clear our earlier debts with them. Our children are at home because we cannot afford sending them to the school. This is our only means of livelihood and since we are not getting our rightful payment, we cannot even seek help from elsewhere to keep our stoves burning,” they said.
Since the AAPWU submitted a letter to the Lohit deputy commissioner on 14 March regarding the hunger strike, both TKE and AE have written to the organisation, giving their clarification on the matter.
“Ironically, both the parties are now playing blame games on each other. While the AE has said that they are not being able to pay the workers’ wages because TKE has not released the payment even after being asked repeatedly by the AE, TKE has blamed the AE for not confirming the final amount to be paid and into which account,” said Ama.
He further said: “We had planned to continue the hunger strike indefinitely until the payments were made to the workers. However, we called it off on the evening of the first day after receiving assurance from TKE and AE that they will pay the deprived workers on 22 March, 2022. If they fail to do so, we will take stricter action and measures to fight for the right of these poor workers.”
The president and members of the AAPWU also participated in the hunger strike along with the deprived workers. They shouted slogans against “the faulty enterprises,” holding posters and placards.
The project in question is a Rs 205,56,00,000 NHIDCL project titled ‘the construction of two-lane with hard shoulders of the Demwe-Brahmakund section of NH 13 from 0.00 km to 18.464 km in EPC mode under NH (O)-NE’.
