Labour file:
Rat-hole Mining at the Cost of the Lives of Workers!
Meghalaya is one of India’s top
ten states as far as coal reserves
go. But despite the ban of coal
mining by the Green tribunal due
to its hazardous activity killing
workers in ‘accidents’, illegal coal
mining thrives in the state primarily
because a large number of those
mines are owned and controlled by
politicians, bureaucrats and police
officers. Due to the nexus between
these owners, the government of
the state turns a blind eye to enforce
law and safety of workers, to protect
the interests of the mine owners.
The unscrupulous mine owners
exploit desperate workers with
impunity, through the method of rat-
hole mining. There are many rat-
hole coal mines in the state killing
workers without providing them any
safety arrangements. Many youth
from the villages work in these coal
mines as there no alternative for
them to get any other employment
and the rat-mining lures them with
higher pay of Rs 1,200-1,500 a day.
The poor youth left with no other
option choose the rat hole mining
work accepting the life risk involved
in the job. Though these workers
are lured with a higher pay, their
payment may not be regular and
they are exploited. They often don’t
get full payment and they are
treated as bonded labourers.
These mine workers are mostly
land-less Muslims from Lower
Assam and Meghalaya’s GARO
hills. At the time of mine accidents
killing workers owners pay no
compensation to them.
Rat-hole mines are common in
Meghalaya mostly located in Jaintia
Hills and Garo Hills.
For rat-hole mining the land is
cleared by removing vegetation.
Subsequently pits measuring from
January - 2019
5 to 100 sq.m are dug to reach the
coal bed. From these rat-holes
which are big enough for only one
person are dug horizontally to
extract coal. The workers enter in
to these rat-holes and reach coal
bed ground, extract it. Very often
these mines are flooded with water
causing the death of workers
trapped underground.
Recently the incident of 15
coal miners trapped on Dec.13 in
a coal mine at Ksan a rat-hole coal
mine in the East Jaintia Hills in
Meghalaya due to flooding with
water seeping through from the
nearby Lytein river once again high-
lights, the plight of these rat-hole
mining workers and the apathy of
the state and control governments
to rescue the workers.
Recently our rulers have
grandly proclaimed concern offering
help when kids of a foot ball team
got trapped in a cave in Thailand.
But the very rulers have shown
their disregard in arranging the
rescue of the trapped mine workers.
Even the highly boasted NDRF
could not to do anything to rescue
the workers claiming that it has no
required equipment -100 horse
power motors-to drain the flood
water from the mines. Even after 3
weeks of this incident no proper
and required action has been taken
up by the governments both central
and state to save the precious lives
of the trapped miners. Experts
opine that the trapped workers
would have already died.
This is not the first time of the
accident of workers trapped in rat-
hole mines occured in Meghalaya.
Two similar accidents occurred
in Garo Hills that claimed nearly two
dozen lives in 2012, and 2014.
In view of serious environmental
degradation and imperilled worker’s
safety the National Green Tribunal
(NGT) had banned coal mining in
Meghalaya since it was illegal,
unscientific and harmfull, on April
17, 2014.
But the state government
turned a blind eye to this illegal
mining to protect the interests of the
mine owners.
Such accidents killing workers
has become a regular phenomena
in coal-mine sector.
A study on three big flooding
accidents published in 2016 by the
IIT, Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad
concluded that the official approach
of fixing responsibility on human
error was followed, since it did not
try to identify the root cause.
According to the data supplied
by the Director General of Mine
Safety it is revealed that the
number of deaths of workers in coal
mines has gone up in our country
by 40 percent since 2016.
This is the real-face of our
‘fast-growing economy’ where
workers are killed due to the
criminal negligence of the mine-
owners towards the safety of workers
and the apathy of governmental
administration towards the workers
safety despite tall claims of providing
safety to workers through various
acts.
But this apathy of administration
is not a mere aberration on the part
of the concerned officials or rulers.
On the contrary it is the result of
class-nature embedded in our very
foundation of our system of
exploitation ruled by the minority
ruling-classes.
Added to this the misfortune of
the workers movement in our country
contd. on page 19
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