IMPHAL, Jul 25: Like in the past few days, volunteers of the Advanced Women Society, Awang Sekmai and the Awang Sekmai Protection Committee checked inter-State passenger vehicles at Awang Sekmai Nongthonband this morning.
They detected and pulled down 45 non-local labourers and one of them was found to be a Bangladeshi National. The 45 non-local people who were handed to Sekmai police station included three women and two children.
JCILPS convenor (Organisation) Hayatur Rahaman Yumkhaibam who also took part in the verification drive remarked that the people of Awang Sekmai have been successfully identifying a large number of non-local people on daily basis in support to the popular demand for enforcement of ILPS or a similar mechanism in the State. However, there have been instances of bus drivers dropping non-local passengers before reaching the spot where the vehicles are checked.
After alighting from the inter-State passengers vehicles, the non-local people travel to their different destinations in auto-rickshaws. As such, the local volunteers and JCILPS have been considering to change the spot of checking vehicles and also to launch similar verification drive on Imphal-Jiribam highway.
Hayatur decried that transporters who brought in non-local people and labour contractors/firms which hired them are not sincere. Reiterating that a new Bill should be passed in place of the PMP Bill 2015 which had been withheld by the President of India, Hayatur expressed strong resentment over the act of handing over all the detained non-local people to their respective contractors/employees in the most casual manner by the State Police.
JCILPS, not being the appropriate authority, stopped working to send back the non-local people to their respective States. Nonetheless, there is no question of calling off the ongoing mass movement. All the transporters who brought in the non-local people and all the contractors/firms which hired them should come to the office of JCILPS within the next two days or else they should be held accountable for any untoward incident resulting thereof, Hayatur said.
The non-local people who were pulled down today were travelling in Elvis Travels, Royal Rajdhani, Zet Travels and Salai Tours and Travels while some others were travelling in diesel auto-rickshaws. While majority of them came on their own, some others were hired by the Keystone Infra Pvt Ltd. Notably, 123 non-local labourers were pulled down at the same place and handed over to police on July 21, 147 on July 22, 89 on July 23 and 43 on July 24.
