By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, July 26: The five-day autumn session of the state Assembly will be held from August 23-30.
“The draft calendar was unanimously accepted during the Business Advisory Committee (BAC) meeting today,” Assembly Speaker Thomas A Sangma said on Friday after the meeting.
He said the BAC decided to have five working days after comparing last year’s autumn session.
Asked if the session would begin with Ronnie V Lyngdoh of Congress as the leader of the Opposition and no Opposition chief whip, he said things would roll as they are.
Labourers’ exodus: Assembly work hit
The recent checking of labourers’ licences by the pressure groups appears to have affected the construction work of the new Assembly building.
“The number of workers on the project has come down from 200 to 50,” Sangma said.
He said he made a surprise visit to the Assembly site on Thursday. “I have been trying to ensure good progress but the work has been hampered by the absence of many labourers,” he said.
He declined to relate the slow progress to the crackdown on migrant labourers by the pressure groups.
“All I can say is that we will not be able to finish the work within the given time frame,” he said.
He added that the left and right wings of the new Assembly building are almost 95% complete and that there has been no cost escalation due to the slow pace of work.
The exodus of more than 2,500 labourers over the past few days has affected several major infrastructure projects in the state, mostly those sanctioned by the Centre.
The contractors handling these projects said some 90% of the labourers have left the state following the vigilantism and resultant assaults in some cases.
The pressure groups claimed they are checking the documents of the labourers as the government has failed to implement the Meghalaya Residents’ Safety and Security Act and the inner line permit.
The contractors said the labourers have been always the soft targets in Meghalaya. They said the situation has come to such a pass that the labourers are not willing to come back and work in the state.