Editor,
This is the second year that total lockdown is imposed in the State and hence it is as dark as it was in 2020 for the poor and labour families, if not darker. It is well known that the income of an estimated two lakh labourers in the informal economy in the State of Meghalaya has fallen by leaps and bounds since 2019.
Most poor families in Meghalaya have had to bear the brunt of the underprivileged treatment that was shown to them by the political class and influential civil society organisations much before the pandemic hit them last year. The violent protests that took place in 2019 with the Citizen Amendment Bill (CAB) led by various civil society NGOs to the Ichamati incident last year in February where curfew was imposed by the authorities for days, evidence suggest that there was little or no thought given on how the working class of the state will survive with no basic income.
The pandemic has so vividly and so woefully brought to light the complete absence of humanity and moral conscience by the present Deputy Chief Minister of Meghalaya, Prestone Tynsong. His abhor mindset towards the labour section of the society where he is the minister in-charge is sad, to say the least, and maybe described as rumblings of a sick mind where he has complete disregard for anyone or any issue.
The statement of the Deputy Chief Minister where he said that ‘people should resort to having rice with vegetables’ is downright heartless and insensitive, especially to many families who are finding it extremely difficult to survive in these trying times.
Tynsong’s remark reminded me of the ‘complete policy failure’ of the then-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill who deliberately ordered the diversion of food supplies from starving Indian civilians to well-supplied British soldiers and to top up European stockpiles which led to the Bengal Famine in 1943 where an estimated three million people were killed.
It is unbecoming of a senior politician who is an aspiring Chief Minister to be spewing such unscrupulous and juvenile statements in a public press conference. His incessant surmises to the public on every issue are utterly irritating and void of any logic. Sometimes I wonder why we elect brainless and loudmouth individuals like Tynsong whose only interest is to gobble up the resources of the state for his benefit even amid such a dangerous pandemic that is claiming the lives of 20 people daily.
The plight of lakhs of labourers and their family doesn’t seem to affect Tynsong; instead, he openly chooses to indulge in corrupt practices through his Labour Department where lakhs of beneficiaries did not receive the amount of Rs 2100 per week promised by the State government for three weeks in 2020.
As a Labour Minister, Tynsong seems to hardly care to enquire how these families are eating and surviving during these difficult times, but is only interested in his corruption efforts to build a robust wealth empire for himself through ill-gotten means. If you are reading this Mr Deputy Chief Minister, we’ve heard enough of you please gracefully tender your resignation.
