NHRC pulls up MP govt on failure to bring in silicosis rehab policy

The National Human Rights Commission has pulled up the Madhya Pradesh government for failing to finalise and implement a silicosis rehabilitation policy in the state despite the panel’s earlier recommendation and also failing to comply with other directives of the Supreme Court vis-a-vis silicosis patients and victims.

Noting that the “authorities of the state are not responding to the processes of the commission (and) even the summons of the commission are not attended to”, the NHRC has sought action-taken report within 15 days from the chief secretary of Madhya Pradesh.

Silicosis is a lung disease that is caused by regular inhalation of silica dust, mainly during course of work that involves large quantities of silica dust in the atmosphere like stone crushing units.

In a recent letter to Chief Secretary Iqbal Singh Bains, Jaideep Govind, secretary general of the NHRC, attached the minutes of a recently held webinar of the NHRC on the pending compensation cases and other issues pertaining to silicosis in the state.

The minutes of the webinar shows that the additional chief secretary of the department of labour, Rajesh Rajora has assured the commission that the silicosis rehabilitation policy will be finalised and implemented within three months.

With several tribal workers of Jhabua, Alirajpur and Jhabua districts getting afflicted in the units in neighbouring Gujarat and several of them dying, a petition was filed in NHRC and when the governments failed to accept recommendations of the NHRC on compensation and rehabilitation, the matter was taken to the Supreme Court. 

The Supreme Court had, in May 2016, directed the Gujarat government to pay compensation to kin of 238 workers and the MP government to rehabilitate 304 patients as recommended by NHRC. 

In April 2017, the SC had extended the order for payment of compensation and rehabilitation to affected persons in unorganised sectors in other states of India too.

Later, the NHRC and SC came out with a string of recommendations and directives regarding diagnosis, prevention, compensation and rehabilitation and asked various states to formulate and implement rehab policies.

During the recent webinar, it was brought to the notice of the commission that apart from failing to finalise and implement a silicosis rehabilitation policy as recommended by the NHRC in March 2017, the Madhya Pradesh government has also failed to comply with the other recommendations of the commission and directives of the Supreme Court.

It was mentioned that of the 1,132 patients to be rehabilitated, 881 (535 in Jhabua district, 203 in Dhar and 143 in Vidisha district) were awaiting rehabilitation. Similarly, the nearest kin of 21 victims from Dhar, 52 from Jhabua and 7 from Vidisha were still awaiting compensation, Amulya Nidhi, representative of NGO Silicosis Peedit Sangh, informed the commission.

The commission has also asked the chief secretary to provide an action-taken report on these aspects. The Silicosis Peedit Sangh is the petitioner in Supreme Court and NHRC on the issue of silicosis affliction and deaths in various districts of Madhya Pradesh.

During the webinar, the assistant registrar (law) of the commission also contested the claims of the state government authorities that there were no patients of silicosis in Bhind district. The AR (law) pointed out that the state government had itself reported that government doctors were not trained to diagnose silicosis, so how the authorities came to the conclusion that there were no cases in the district.

The Silicosis Peedit Sangh has said that there are large numbers of patients of silicosis in Vidisha, Panna, Bhind and Shivpuri districts, but the diagnosis process is not being undertaken.

The commission, in its letter to the chief secretary of MP, said that it has been brought to their notice that the state government doctors were either not diagnosing the disease or were under instruction not to write the correct diagnosis.