Employees of Cachar and Nagaon paper mills left abandoned at the mercy of none!

December 25: The issue of reviving the two public sector paper mills – at Nagaon and Panchgram seems to have receded in oblivion. The abandoned mills and its employees are now left at the mercy of none. The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) had in November 2019 ordered the liquidation of the Nagaon and Cachar paper mills after the central government refused to release Rs 98 lakh that Hindustan Paper Corporation Limited (HPCL) owed to a company named Allow & Metals as payment for raw materials the latter supplied to the two paper mills.

Meanwhile, another issue which has surfaced in a section of the media since yesterday seemed to be the last nail in the coffin of the employees of the two ill-fated paper mills of Assam. As per media reports,a  circular has been issued on behalf of the liquidators of Hindustan Paper Corporation Limited (HPCL) asking “residents of respective quarters of HPC Ltd (including HPC Salt lake housing complex) of all locations to kindly vacate their quarters by 31.01.2020”. If this happens to contain truth, than the hundreds of employees along with their starving children and ailing family members will be on the roads.

Cachar Paper Mill and Nagaon Paper Mill run by Hindustan Paper Corporation Limited (HPCL) have been non-functional since 20 October 2015 and 13 March 2017 respectively. The employees of the two mills have not received salaries for the past 35 and 33 months.

We appeal to the government to construct ‘gas chamber’ and kill all workers & their dependents of HPC Paper Mills of Panchgram and Nagaon as Hitler did to kill the Jews. It’s better to die at one stroke than to get killed everyday in abject poverty without getting salary for almost 3 years. This were the words uttered by Manabendra Chakraborty, Chief Convenor of HPC Paper Mills Revival Action Committee while speaking to way2barak a few weeks ago. “We are now at the apathy of the government. Only death can relieve us of this crisis,” he said.

An amount of Rs. 90 crore for disbursal of the pending salary of the paper mill employees was earmarked in the national budget of 2018-19. The matter was taken up to the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT), a quasi-judicial body in India that adjudicates issues relating to Indian companies. However, all hopes of the employees of the two paper mills were crushed when in May 2019, the Additional Solicitor General appeared before the NCLT on behalf of the Government and told that the 90 crore rupees which was only a part of HPC salary dues, shown in the budget of 2018-19, ‘has been diverted’ to other purposes. This indirectly means that the episode of Rs.90 crores is now a bygone affair and the HPC employees are not going to get the money.

Till now, around 55 employees of the mills have died due to poverty out of which some have even committed suicide. The last one to die was 55 year old Engineer Biswajit Mazumder, an engineer of Nagaon Paper Mill, who committed suicide on 29 April, 2019. One of the employee said, “Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal along with many BJP leaders gave us multiple assurances of reviving the two paper mills but all their words were blank promises.”

Meanwhile, the Assam Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has sought a report on the status of Cachar Paper Mill and Nagaon Paper Mill and Assam Polyester Co-operative Society Limited (APOL). Taking up a petition of the Save Industry Save Workers Joint Struggle Committee, a single bench of N.K. Bora has directed the Commissioner and Secretary, department of industries and commerce to submit the report within one month. Also the Gauhati High Court will give its order on January 9 in connection with a petition filed by the unions of the two paper mills in Assam seeking clearance of Rs 90 crore sanctioned in Parliament in 2018 for payment of the workers’ pending salaries.

Several hundred employees of the two paper mills, as well as their family members, have been living in abject poverty after the mills were abruptly shut down. Moreover, several thousand who indirectly depended upon the functioning of the mills like, contractors, suppliers, transporters, repair shops, petty traders, shopkeepers, vegetable vendors, rickshaw-pullers and many others too were reduced to a state of pauper. Being devoid of salary for almost 3 years, the children of the employees were bound to leave schools and colleges, the parents of the employees were allowed to die due to old-age related and other ailments and starvation left them at the mercy of impending death.

The two paper mills now stand as mute witness to a saga of hunger, starvation & death. Such an end of the two public sector enterprises of a ‘welfare state’ does not sound healthy for the largest democracy of the world.