The five-member team of Hazaribagh district BJP office bearers, led by Prof. Surendra Sinha, MP Representative, visited the under-construction R&R Colony of NTPC at Dhenga village of Barkagaon block. Team leader Prof. Surendra Sinha said that they have found many anomalies there and on Tuesday they will submit their report to Yashwant Sinha.
The BJP team comprising Prof. Surendra Sinha, Rajkumar lal, Shiv Shankar Gupta, Vipin Sinha and Mulchand Sao talked to the labours working at the site, representatives of displaced peasants and the NTPC officials at Barkagaon. They also visited the ITI building built by NTPC.
During this visit the labours working at the site openly complained that the contractor is giving only Rs160 to woman labours, Rs200 to man labours and Rs320 to masons, which is below the minimum wage as per the agreement of this contract. They also said that the contractor always threats them to turn them out of the job whenever they talk about it.
The team members raised questions on the size of units and quality of under-construction R&R Colony.
They also noticed that use of more sand in black cement is going on there and no one of NTPC is taking care of it. At site too talking with the local newsmen team members accepted that the construction work going on is of inferior quality.
On the other hand AGM NTPC BB Mahapatra informed the team members that their company has decided to provide one unit each to every married person of the family of displaced peasants and open space for their cattles. Besides this they are going to construct 8 schools, hospital, playground, shopping complex, health center, temple, mosque, gurudwara, power sub-station etc. in the colony.
Team leader Professor Surendra Sinha said that in my opinion the anomalies are due to transfer of work on sub contract and petty contract.
The entire project is of Rs265 crores. NTPC has given the tender to Mcnley and MBCC, who had first given sub-contract to some big local contractors and they also transferred the work on petty contract to small local contractors. Veteran Yashwant Sinha, MP Jayant Sinha and CM Raghuvar Das have taken the issue seriously so it can be hoped that soon things will be back on right track.