It is easy to spread wrong messages based on assumptions and create a fear psychosis. The role of Government is to nip such assumptions in the bud by providing correct data. These days, pressure groups with wide ranging acronyms and all professing to work for the ‘jaitbynriew,’ meaning in this case the Khasi people, since the word jaitbynriew is a Khasi word, have been asserting their power derived from the assumption that all jobs in the different construction and other companies have been taken over by non-tribals by depriving an equally competent tribal labour force. Is this the correct position? Only data can give us the accurate picture.
Ri Bhoi district is currently the hub for these constant tugs of war between the so-called non-tribal business establishments in the industrial areas and the people they employ to run those factories. If the motive of the pressure groups is to ensure that the jobs meant for the tribal labour force are not taken away, they should demand that the Government conduct a survey to find out exactly what is the skilled labour force requirement for the different companies? Is that labour force available locally? Where is that labour force registered? Does Meghalaya have the required skilled workforce? What are the areas of work (labour) where there is a shortage of local skilled labour? Is the Government skilling people for such specific work areas? Are the pressure groups demanding that the Government set up skilling institutions in these critical areas so as to fill the vacuum that is currently there? If a migrant worker is an Indian citizen, he would have at least one identification document. Isn’t that enough to prove his credentials? When a person from Meghalaya is employed outside the state does he/she have to go through the processes that are demanded by the pressure groups here? Do those workers have to register themselves with the Labour Department of those states? Is it the brief of the Labour Department to check who is a migrant worker and who isn’t?
The Labour Department’s brief is to secure the basic rights of workers wherever they are working and to ensure they are not exploited by their management. The Labour Department ensures that social security schemes and welfare fund boards for different sections of workers are working well. The Department is instrumental in conciliation and conflict resolution between the labour and the management. In short, the Labour Department seeks to promote the welfare of the working class by ensuring safety, security and improved conditions of work, enforcing various labour laws in respect of minimum wages, payment of wages , gratuity etc., facilitating collective bargaining within the framework of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, providing social security for the workers and their family members and legal remedies in exigencies like loss of job, strike, lockout, closure etc. It’s a different matter that the State Labour Department here is remiss in most of the tasks outlined for it. In fact, the Labour Department should have stepped out to take to task the pressure groups that have overstepped their brief in recent times. It is incumbent on the Labour Department to come up with the correct statistics to clear all assumptions which give a handle to opportunists to take the law into their hands!
