CPIML condemns the criminal negligence that has caused seven workers to be killed and six others severely burned after an accident at the Adani Power Limited (APL)’s Mundra Power plant in Kutch on April 20. Most of these workers are from Bihar and Jharkhand.
The internal enquiry into the accident by the Adani management and by the local district administration cannot be trusted. The Gujarat Government and the BJP, including Prime Minister Modi are known to enjoy a close relationship with Adani, and so a cover-up is most likely. The CPIML demands an independent time-bound judicial probe to identify and punish the perpetrators.
Corporations have enjoyed a sense of impunity since the Bhopal disaster, and this has only been emboldened with the Modi Government’s bid to loosen labour and safety laws in the name of ‘self-certification’ to woo corporate to ‘Make In India.’
The ‘Gujarat Model’ that the Central Government headed by Narendra Modi favours, is an openly anti-worker, pro-corporate one. In Gujarat, authorities have recently admitted that the Gujarat Government under Modi “did nothing” for construction workers’ welfare, compensating only 7 out of 731 workplace deaths, because of rules that only allow ‘registered’ construction workers to qualify for compensation. Not surprisingly, these rules are in tandem with the fact that Gujarat has among the worst rates in the country for registration of construction workers in welfare boards! Only 19% of Gujarat’s construction workers are registered, and expenditure on social security even for those registered workers is abysmally low.
The CPIML demands that labour and safety laws be strengthened all over the country to ensure punishment andblacklisting as well as criminal prosecution of companies and contractors for non-compliance.
