70 labourers still missing in Chungthang, claim labourers arriving in Gangtok

GANGTOK, 22 Sept: Almost all houses in Chungthang damaged, some bodies still to be recovered from the debris, no clean water to drink and a number of labourers recorded missing is the kind of status report of Chungthang coming in from eye-witnesses and those who survived the earthquake of 18 September at the north district sub-division.
A group of labourers of Euphoria company, one of the numerous companies working at Teesta Urja’s Teesta Stage III hydel project site, returned to Gangtok today on their way to their respective homes.

“There must be around 5,000 people still at Chungthang including labourers and project officials,” they inform.
They further stated that bodies were still to be pulled out of the debris. It was also informed by them that 70 labourers have been recorded as missing.
“The labourers belong to different companies to whom work has been sublet by Teesta Urja and the respective labour contractors have put up their list of missing persons to the company. In this list, there are names of 70 labourers recorded as missing,” they informed today.
As of now neither the district administration nor the company is openly acknowledging that there might be persons missing as of now.
While Teesta Urja has issued a press statement stating that all its labourers have been accounted for and their families contacted, it needs to be mentioned that there are numerous companies working at the project sites, some with as few as 30 labourers of their own engaged for specific works.
In fact, some of the sublet companies have further sublet their work to still smaller companies such as Euphoria which was engaged in concreting and related work at the Chungthang dam-site. Also, the testimonials of families who have persons missing reveal that ulike the company’s claims, there has been no communication about their relatives working at the site.
Apart from the 70 missing labourers, it was also informed that there was an ongoing effort to locate one local labourer who had gone missing near one of the tunnels at the time of the earthquake.
“He had gone out to get milk for us,” the labourers who reached Gangtok today state.
While these labourers usually work in the tunnels, they were fortunate not to be in the tunnels on 18 September as it was Biswakarma Puja and they were observing a holiday.
“Had we been working in the tunnel, we would all have been washed away,” says one who hails from Kalimpong.
In fact, many labourers were saved due to this coincidence.
However, contrary to claims by Teesta Urja officials made in their press statement - in fact the contact phone number of their spokesperson has remained inaccessible for the past 2 days – this group of labourers claim that some tunnels are still filled with water and that it would take some time to drain them out. They also claim that the bodies of 12 company ‘officials’ from south India were cremated up at Chungthang.
It was further informed that there is no clean water there to drink and that most people were still sleeping out in the open.
“There are people who sleep on the ground or in their cars as we always have to be on alert,” they claim. The army along with the Gurudwara committee and other locals were organizing meals for those still up there.
As for this group of labourers, they all survived and trekked it down to Mangan from where their company vehicle brought them down to Gangtok this afternoon. Euphoria has taken good care of their small group of labourers and the vice president, KP Pothen, informed that the workers will be provided their dues and sent home if they want to leave and could also return to their work should they so desire.