Dimapur, June 16 (EMN): The construction of a 4-lane highway between Kohima and Dimapur – which seeks to provide faster road connectivity between the State’s administrative power-centre and its economic capital – has run into an NSCN (IM)-sized roadblock.
On Thursday afternoon, some members of the NSCN (IM) – the only armed Naga group currently engaged in political negotiation with New Delhi – were reported to have “ordered” contractors/ workers to stop construction works or else face the prospect of watching their entire machineries being reduced to ashes.
Said contractors/ workers were engaged at “earth-cutting” activities along the 2-km-odd stretch of the national highway between Jharnapani and Medzephima town. According to sources from the Nagaland Suppliers’ and Contractors’ Union (NCSU), the NSCN (IM) members threatened to torch the entire machineries if the workers would not stop their construction activities. Currently, the NCSU workers are engaged at two separate construction activities along the stretch between Jharnapani and Medzephima town. It was informed that the NSCN (IM) members delivered the warning to the group of workers working near Medzephima town.
This particular stretch of road was awarded to the construction company ECI, when the contracts were auctioned. Subsequently, the ECI and the NCSU entered into an agreement allowing the local contractors to execute the project works. According to NCSU sources, they have yet to receive any monetary demands from the group – giving rise to speculations that the NSCN (IM) had submitted said demand to the ECI.
NCSU sources on Friday said that negotiations, through the telephone, with NSCN (IM) functionaries were underway. It was informed that one of the engineers involved in the project had even gone to the outfit’s ceasefire monitoring cell office located at Diphupar on Thursday evening to discuss the development. Reportedly, the NSCN (IM) official concerned was not there.
An NCSU official informed that the local contractors have suffered a loss of around Rs 6-7 lakhs, merely from being forced to stop working for a single day. All the machineries and the workers, the source informed, were hired.
They have engaged/hired at least 47 different vehicles, and around 70-80 workers for said project, it was informed. Regardless of the NSCN (IM) directive, the contractors have to compensate the workers as well as the use of machineries, every single day.
The unspoken fear that runs among the local contractors is that if the NSCN (IM) could resort to such mode of operation, it would certainly leave the door open for other Naga armed groups to take advantage of the situation.
