In Meghalaya not everyone enjoys human rights. The poor and voiceless certainly have no rights. The miners trapped in the mines at Ksan in the Lumthari area of East Jaintia Hills District on December 13 last when the mine suddenly flooded, are virtually left to their fates. There is no public outcry against this inhuman treatment of over 15 lives left to die in agony for want of rapid assistance. This issue raises many questions. Firstly, what is the readiness of the State Administration to tackle mining disasters? How quickly did the East Jaintia Hills (EJH) Administration respond or was it busy trying to cover up its tracks about illegal mining happening under its nose? What communication went out from the District Administration, EJH to the State Government about the imperatives to rescue the trapped miners? Were the Defence Forces contacted for assistance? Is the State Disaster Relief Force (SDRF) trained to tackle accidents in rat-hole mines? Do they know the standard operating procedures? Why is it taking so long for the 100 HP Pumps for suctioning out the water from the mine to arrive? This mining disaster actually questions the capability and competence of the State Disaster Management Force (SDMF) to tackle any accident. In a state where large scale mining operations are going on and rat hole mining has been permitted to carry on up until 2014, the SDMF should have been trained to tackle mining disasters. But that evidently is not the brief of this Force since mines privately owned and miners are treated as commodities.
The common perception is that miners are either interlopers from Bangladesh who are desperate for work or they are from Nepal where they enter India on the basis of the 1950 Indo-Nepal Treaty. But in this case there were three local miners too who are from the District and seven others who are from West Garo Hills while four are from Kokrajhar district, Assam. To add insult to injury none of the ministers from the ruling Meghalaya Democratic Alliance (MDA) have visited the site of the mining disaster. Even the Minister in Charge of Disaster Management, Kyrmen Shylla who had earlier stated upfront that there is no illegal mining in his constituency in East Jaintia Hills did not feel the need to get a first-hand account of the incident by visiting the site. But neither have any MLAs from the Opposition visited site at the time of writing this edit. Only the MLA of Rajabala constituency, Azad Aman, went there because the seven miners belonged to his constituency.
That Government of Meghalaya gives no priority to disaster management is evident from the fact that the Departments of Relief and Rehabilitation and Disaster Management were merged with the Revenue Department in March 2006. Vide Notification No. RDG4/2003/55 dated 02.03.2006. How and why the Revenue Department which looks after the administration of land and land records in the state should also be looking after disaster management is the question that begs for an answer. And Government should answer this question!