Guwahati, Feb 8: An employee of the Cachar Paper Mill, a unit of the defunct Hindustan Paper Corporation (HPC) and subsequently taken over by the Assam government, died on Thursday, taking the death toll of employees of the two mills, including Nagaon Paper Mill, to 120.
In a statement, Manobendra Chakraborty, president of the Joint Action Committee of Recognised Unions (JACRU) of the two mills, informed that Monteswar Ali Laskar (60), a resident of Sonai constituency in Cachar district, suffered a cerebral strike following multiple organ failure and passed away at his residence on Thursday morning.
On January 1, Birsing Deka, a resident of Hatiamukh in Jagiroad constituency, an employee of Nagaon Paper Mill in Morigaon district, had passed away due to a kidney failure at a nursing home here.
“Workers of the two paper mills of Assam are passing days with unbearable suffering, stress, trauma and lost all hope to live life with human dignity while the Government of India has not paid salaries to the paper mill workers since the past 85 months,” Chakraborty said.
“The Assam government had declared a relief package to save lives but it is pertinent to note that irreparable damages have been already caused earlier, now resulting in deaths one after another. Thus, the responsibility of such deaths rests on the Government of India which failed to resolve the crisis till now,” he said.
