Thousands of daily labourers at the MIDC Industrial Estate, Umiam, today protested en masse after alleging that members of the Khasi Students Union (KSU) assaulted them.
The KSU’s Umiam unit came to the site to check on whether the non-indigenous labourers working there had valid labour licences.
The ‘inspection’ centred on Riangdo Veneers. The KSU denied that its members had assaulted anybody and said that it had no intention of causing a law and order situation.
Police and a magistrate were deployed to the scene to calm the situation. On learning that the labourers were holding a protest, the KSU also rushed to the spot to confront them but were kept at bay by the police.
The KSU had received reports that many of the workers at Riangdo Veneers did not have labour licences. Factory manager SK Banerjee said that the pressure group members barged into the plant demanding to see the labour licences and assaulted those present “for no valid reason”. Many workers were allegedly injured. They showed the KSU their Aadhaar cards but not any Meghalaya-specific documents.
Workers demanded that the KSU members guilty of assaulting them should be arrested. They, and their colleagues in other factories, also threatened to halt work at the industrial estate and block the road in Jorabat, which connects Meghalaya to Assam.
KSU Umiam secretary Marcus Nongkhlaw blamed the owners of Riangdo Veneers for instigating the workforce into protest.
Meanwhile, the pressure group was supported in its document-checking drive by the Umiam dorbar shnong. Secretary S Marwein said that many non-locals had come to work at the factory without informing the dorbar. This lack of checks, residents fear, could lead to increased crime and difficulty in catching the guilty.
The KSU demanded that the owners of Riangdo Veneers issue an apology and called the allegations of assault “baseless and untrue”.
