Coal miners and traders in Meghalaya have threatened mass defiance of the COVID-19 lockdown over what is being seen as the State government’s move to “carry coal to Newcastle.”
The Meghalaya government had on May 6 issued an order allowing transportation of coal from Assam and other States for cement plants in the State, some of them in East Jaintia Hills (EJH) district.
The ‘irony’ of the order was not lost on many in the coal-rich EJH district whose economy began suffering after the National Green Tribunal (NGT) banned the hazardous rat-hole coal mining in April 2014. The Supreme Court later restricted the transportation of coal before the ban came into effect.
“We have set the government a four-day deadline from today [Wednesday] to withdraw the order when steps have not been initiated for auctioning the remaining 32 lakh tonnes of extracted coal as the Supreme Court had ordered,” said Shanbor Lamare, secretary of the Jaintia Coal Miner and Dealer Association.
“All miners, village headmen, members of pressure groups, traders’ associations and the general public will defy the lockdown if the government fails to heed our demand,” said Albinus Lamurong of the Meghalaya People’s Labour Union, Jaintia Hills.
According to Meghalaya’s coal mine owners and managers, the order to bring in coal to a State where thousands of coal mines were lying idle — EJH alone has about 60,000 pits — was a mockery of the economic crisis they have been facing since the NGT ban.
Prior to the ban, EJH used to help generate the bulk of ₹600 crore the Meghalaya government used to get from coal trade.
“The order is like bringing coal to Newcastle,” said a coal mine owner, declining to be quoted.
The economy of Newcastle upon Tyne in north-eastern England was once so dependent on coal trade that it was considered futile to sell coal from anywhere else there. The idiom began to be associated with Newcastle in Australia after the coal industry in England’s Newcastle became non-existent.
COVID-19 danger
Organisations associated with coal mining and trading in Meghalaya, however, said their opposition to coal from outside the State was not only about being denied auctioning of their own coal.
In their letter to the Director-General of Police on May 11, they pointed out that the government allowed the trucks from outside without making it necessary for them to seek permits or maintain gaps. “This puts the life and health of the people of EJH district in particular and the State in general in a great danger due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” the organisations said.