At least a thousand labourers, many of them from Bengal, fled the site of the 1,200MW Teesta Stage-III hydel power project in Chungthang, North Sikkim, after seeing several fellow workers crushed by hurtling rocks.
Last Sunday’s 6.9-magnitude quake, which has claimed over a 100 lives, didn’t just leave a trail of death; it snapped livelihoods too.
“We all ran. We spent the night in Chungthang town. We wanted to head home the next morning but the road from Chungthang and that beyond Mangan to Siliguri were inaccessible. But almost every one of us have been fleeing since Tuesday after we heard the road to Siliguri had opened,” said Jalpaiguri resident Maneswar Roy.
An official with the labour department said around 1,000 labourers had fled the site.
Sources said the company had told the department work had been halted for some 15 days.
Chungthang and its adjoining areas, where the project is being implemented by Teesta Urja Limited, have been worst hit by the September 18 quake.
Even today, the road from Chungthang to Mangan, North Sikkim’s administrative headquarters further down towards Gangtok, is inaccessible by vehicles.
But the jagged road didn’t deter Roy and his fellow workers. Some 20 of them, all from Jalpaiguri, trekked 30km from Chungthang to reach Mangan yesterday.
“We haven’t got salaries for one-and-a-half months. The company said it would pay us after the roads were cleared and money came from the bank. Some of us are broke, but we are not complaining. The only thing that matters now is to reach home,” said Subhas Bhowmick, also from Jalpaiguri, who walked with 50 others to Mangan, where a relief camp has been set up. “We are not coming back here.”
A spokesperson for Teesta Urja said contractors hired most of the labourers and wages were paid on a weekly or fortnightly basis.
Most of the labourers are from Bihar, Bengal and Nepal.
PM to visit
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, now in America for a UN session, is likely to visit Sikkim on September 27, a government spokesperson said today.
“The Prime Minister is likely to visit Sikkim on September 27. The state government is preparing a memorandum of estimated damages to be submitted to the Prime Minister,” K.S. Topgay said.