Haryana yet to implement SC order on homes for quarry workers

C R Rathee

Migrant workers employed in the stone quarries on the Faridabad ridge in Haryana may not get a roof for their families in the foreseeable future despite the Supreme Court directive to the state government to construct dwelling units for them and recover the cost from the lease-holders.

The National Labour Commission (NLC) had, a few years ago, with the help of the Bonded Labour Front (BLF) of Swami Agnivesh, given to the state government a list of 536 families employed in various clusters of stone quarries for whom the dwelling units were to be constructed. Land for the purpose has already been committed free by the Faridabad Municipal Corporation(FMC).

A senior officer of Haryana’s finance department told The Financial Express that a revolving fund was at the disposal of the state’s labour department to construct 50 tenements. After recovering the cost of these houses, the second phase would be taken up. The total cost of constructing the dwelling units plus community facilities was estimated at Rs 12 crore. He said the lean exchequer of the state could not be expected to set apart the entire amount in advance.

The first lot of such dwelling units at a place called Buriya Ka Nullah is almost ready for handing over possession. The state government has constructed a primary school and community centre in the midst of these dwelling units.

The finance department officer said the government had already spent about Rs 50 lakh on this ‘composit cluster’. However, most leaseholders, who are supposed to reimburse the cost of these dwelling units, are not traceable. Unless the cost of the first cluster was recoverd from leaseholders, the revolving fund would be blocked, he added.

This, inter alia, implies that the SC directive cannot be complied with, though the state government, according to official sources, is keen to comply with it. Enquiries indicate that a senior state minister and at least two MPs (including one of the BJP) are among the ‘lessees’ of the mines in this ridge. But they cannot be directly held responsible for the impasse as the leases are mostly benami. In some cases, the companies, which had originally employed these quarry-workers (through middlemen), have changed their names and had shifted their head offices. Some are reported to have changed the directors of the companies and as such, the new directors cannot be lawfully prosecuted for non-compliance of the SC directive, legal experts point.

One lease-holder, who has volunteered to pay his share of the housing project, said that the list of quarry workers available with the government was deficient in the sense that it did contain full particulars of the prospective allotees. Even photos has not been pasted of each ‘identified’ worker on the list, he added. There are already reports of some workers having left for their natives places in Rajasthan, eastern UP, Orissa, Bihar and West Bengal in search of work.

The BLF, however, interprets this as ‘contempt of court’. An unfortunate aspect of the situation is that most quarry workers and their families belong to far off places and do not have any native politician to represent their case.

The NLC and the National Human Rights Commission, too, have expressed concern over the impasse. Meanwhile, excise and police officials in-charge of these areas have alleged that some shopkeepers and PDS depot holders were reportedly smuggling illicit liquor and selling it in the deras (temporary hutments) of the quarry workers. In fact, one police person alleged that a person claming to be volunteer/employee of an NGO operating in the Arvallis, reportedly to oversee the welfare of the bonded/migrant labourers and their families, was suspected to be involved in the hooch trade. The BLF secretariat, however, described this allegation as ‘totally false’.