Labourers stop work on Suki Kinari hydropower project

MANSEHRA: The labourers working on the 880 megawatts Suki Kanari hydropower project have boycotted the work until they were allowed to go home and paid their allowances withheld since the outbreak of coronavirus in the country.

“We are confined only to residential camps of the dam’s sites after our duty since the outbreak of coronavirus late February this year. We would not continue our work until the company allows us to go to our homes in accordance with labour policy,” Tahir Hussain Shah, the president of labour union, told the protesting labourers at a residential camp in Kaghan valley on Tuesday. The labourers were chanting slogans in support of their demands after quitting the work at different sites of the dam spread over a wide area in the valley. The labour leader said that the company working on the dam didn’t follow the quarantine rules set by the federal government and kept confined thousands of labourers since early this year.

“The labourers cannot stay anymore at the camps being illegally confined here and wanted to meet their loved ones after an interval of almost eight consecutive months,” he said. The president of the labourer’s body said that the company was also not paying the allowances of the labourers since they were confined at the residential camps.

“Thousands of labourers are still without work at their homes and company concerned despite signing a memorandum of understanding with them in presence of the Assistant Commissioner Balakot didn’t call them back on duty,” said Shah.