25-year-old Wayajed Ali, and 24-year-old Abdul Amin (missing worker), said their final goodbyes to their families on May 30 in a village in Assam’s Bongaigaon district. A contractor promised the two, who were the sons of daily wagers and school dropouts, “a job in Bengal.”
But it wasn’t until three days later that the pair arrived in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh. They travelled another 400 kilometres north to Damin in the Kurung Kumey district, which also borders China, where they set up camp with 30 other men from Assam to work on a road construction project.
Bakkar Ali, Ali’s father, says he only heard from his son three times after he left home: first when he arrived in Itanagar, then 15 days later from Damin, and finally on July 3, when he told his father he would return on July 5, in time for Eid on July 10.
However, as the family waited on July 5, Bakkar claims he received a call from the contractor informing him that his son and others had “fled” from the camp.
2 weeks later, Apart from Ali and Amin, 17 other workers labouring on the Border Roads Organisation’s (BRO) Sarli-Huri road construction project, located approximately 90 kilometres from the India-China border, are still “missing.” There is no mobile connectivity at Huri or Damin, leaving families in the dark about what happened to the 19 — the youngest of whom, according to relatives, is around 16 years old.
According to the Kurung Kumey district administration, they first learned about the labourers who ‘fled’ on July 13 and immediately launched a search operation – to no avail.
According to Kurung Kumey Deputy Commissioner Nighee Bengia, an SDRF team was on its way to Damin, and an IAF helicopter had been requisitioned, while a rescue team was already conducting a search operation.
“The route they took was through the jungle, there is no road there. The area is inhospitable, filled with deep gorges, steep hills, poisonous snakes and a river. That is why the rescue operation has been so difficult,” Bengia explained.
The Deputy Commissioner went on to say that it was common for labourers from Assam and other states to be brought in for large construction projects in Arunachal. Many tribes in the state, he claims, do not work in construction.
Bengia said there was no clarity on why the labourers decided to “escape.” “In the last few weeks, two subcontractors (who had got the labourers from Assam) went home, leaving the workers behind at the camp. There may have been a ration problem, or a financial problem… The contractor who pays money was not there for many days. Also, Eid was coming up,” the officer explained. “But all this is speculation. We do not know why they left.”
According to initial reports, the labourers left after being denied Eid leave. Some families claim that the workers were threatened to stay. The district administration said on Tuesday that reports that one of the labourers’ bodies had been discovered in a river were false.
The construction of the Sarli-Huri road began in May 2006 as part of the BRO’s Project Arunank and is now nearing completion.
According to a senior BRO official, while the BRO hires labourers and does the majority of the work itself, it is common practice to outsource some of the work to an external contractor to “speed up” the process. “In this case, it was the latter.
The labourers who are missing do not report to the BRO. The entire operation on that stretch of the road — including the manpower, resources, machinery – was outsourced to a local contractor of Arunachal Pradesh. The BRO has no role in this… the terms and conditions, pay, everything is between contractor and labourer,” he explained.
The BRO officer, on the other hand, admitted that the sites were “difficult” to stay at. “There is no mobile or Internet connectivity, and it is common for labourers to head home in a month, no one wants to stay for long,” he explained. “We do not know what transpired between the contractor and labourers in this case.”
Bengia Bado, the owner of BB Enterprise, is the local contractor who was commissioned for the construction work. Bado, in turn, has many Assamese subcontractors who bring workers from the state. The reporters attempted to contact Bado but received no response.
Bakkar claims that the last time he spoke with his son Ali, he sounded “disturbed.” “He even said he felt he was in danger, that he wanted to escape and people there were not allowing him to come home,” he says. “But we are poor; our bread and butter come from jobs like these, and travelling such distances is not out of the ordinary.”
Seven men have not returned home, who are from Kokrajhar’s Malgaon. “We are barely able to process what has happened,” stated Jaharul Islam, a village leader. “The contractor, Rezaul Karim, promised Rs 700-1,000 a day for the work. The boys who went are young, many of them are students, and from very poor families. So for them, going was more of a compulsion.”
The villagers said they were looking for contractor Karim.
According to Islam, one of the boys called him for help from Itanagar and said they were being taken to the China border. “They asked me to bring them back. But that is the last we heard from them,” he added.
Sakimuddin, the uncle of Manowar Hussain, 16, who is also from the same village, says they were poor farmers who had no idea the boys would be taken so far. “We have not spoken to Manowar since they left,” he admits.
Joynal Abedin, an imam at a mosque in Kamrup district, says he last heard from his son Inamul Hasan on July 3. “He told me he had borrowed somebody’s phone to call home for 10 minutes. He said the people at the camp were threatening him, stopping him from coming home,” Abedin says, adding that the last few days have been “chaotic.” “I am an imam, I’m usually calm and composed. But despite this, I cannot help but break down,” he expressed.