An Open Letter
Morning Star Sumer
With humility and due respect to your position as head of the Government of India today, I shed all my personal dignity to petition for the people of India, especially those indigenous citizens who are unfortunate to be living around the PhudKyllengPyndenUmiong-
I am a freelance/independent writer who is one amongst those who are concerned about public interests in all spheres of civil life. I do not write fiction; I write only real stories about things I have personally experienced in my life time.
To get to the point I wish to draw your attention to the front paged headline in The Shillong Times of March 17, 2017, reading, “Deadlock continues as pressure groups junk UCIL assurance” in which Samuel Jyrwa, the NESO President had asserted, that the UCIL’s scientists’ assurance of taking responsibility to ensure safety is hollow and further said, “We understood that when it comes to uranium mining there is no safe precaution to mining”. I personally and strongly support this view. Till date, nothing has been either said or done about safe uranium mining. The stark truth is that even in Jaduguda where uranium mining has been going on for decades, the Regulatory Authority’s safeguards have not been implemented as observed and commented upon by Dr. S. Gadekar of the AnuMukti team of scientists who had done extensive research in Jaduguda for decades. Dr. SanghamitriGadekar, wife of Dr. Gadekar, had also expressed her opinion about the deleterious effects of uranium mining on genetics which have been causing abnormal birth defects that produced deformed children in Jaduguda and now in the Nongjri and Domiasiat mining sites.
More to the point, my own private research and findings are that the UCIL’s scientists’ assertion of being able to provide safeguards in uranium mining in Meghalaya is hollow because of the following facts:-
1. The attempt to hoodwink the public by suggesting that for more than a decade there had been the so-called “exploratory mining” to suggest that it is only a prospecting process whereas actual ISL (In-situ leaching) of the mineral has been going on for more than a decade and is still being continued.
2. The lies of the UCIL’s scientists’ that there have been only a few exploratory boreholes needed for the so-called exploratory/prospecting mining has been exposed because only a fortnight ago, I personally visited the mining sites along with the KSU leaders to see and expose more than 1500 drilled boreholes as confirmed by the UCIL representative at the site. Why are so many holes necessary for exploratory project? Why does it take so long (more than a decade) to explore?
3. The UCIL’s scientists’ pious declaration that they are doing something to provide safeguards is junked by the fact that the tailings are contained in a makeshift structure constructed of cement block not in accordance with the Regulatory Authority’s specifications for safeguards.
The damage had been begun and done by previous governments and is being continued by your government and cannot be undone. This petition is not, therefore, to undo the damage which cannot be undone but, to stop the process by appealing to your conscience to order the UCIL’s scientists to dispose off the tailings in accordance with the Regulatory Authority’s safeguards standard/measures.
Finally, I appeal to your conscience to support and prove your oft repeated concern for the common man by visiting the mining sites at Nongjri-Domiasiat and other sites and talk to the local citizens and to see the many manifestations of the health hazards and the damage already done to the populace at uranium mining sites.
The UCIL’s scientists cannot be absolved of the accusation that they have been carrying on genocide of the indigenous population at the abovementioned uranium mining sites which is worse than that at Auschwitz during World War II.