Meghalaya: Groups condemn Deputy CM Tynsong's statement on ‘consume vegetables with rice and lessen meat’

SHILLONG:

Thma U Rangli Juki (TUR) and Workers Power of Meghalaya has condemned the statement of Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong where he asked the working people of the state whose livelihoods have been destroyed by the lockdown to ‘eat vegetables with their rice, not meat.’ 

In a statement issued here, TUR said he made the “insensitive statement while rejecting the demand for income support for the daily wage workers including domestic workers, taxi drivers, marginal farmers.”    

TUR said that Tynsong doesn’t deserve to be the Deputy Chief Minister of Meghalaya if he can only respond to the bleak plight of the poor working people by insulting them further. 

“He should realise that almost a month-long containment measures and lockdown have brought the working people to their knees, where forget about vegetables, people don’t have the income to even buy rice”, he said.

TUR asserted that his insensitivity was further exposed when he put the minor problems of the rich and the salaried in the same basket as those of the working classes who are staring at hunger daily. 

They pointed out that for the rich and the salaried, they can get their essentials and non-essentials home-delivered while the poor, even if locality shops open, they cannot afford to buy anything because they have had no income.

TUR said that Tynsong is also the Labour Minister who presided over the supposed income support of Rs 2100 to the people who had lost their livelihoods in the first wave, for which the government claimed that it had spent 52 crore rupees. 

TUR has alleged that the government was lying about that income support because less than 25 per cent of the supposed beneficiaries got the Rs 2100 and Rs 5000 booked against their names and maintained that Tynsong has to account for the crores which have not yet been transferred to the beneficiaries. 

TUR and WPM had even pointed out that 120 crore can easily be raised towards providing income support to the daily wagers by consolidating Rs 2 crore each given to the 60 MLAs.

 “This can provide income support of 5000 each to 2 lakh 40 thousand households. Further, there should be a 25 per cent cut in salaries, for the next two months of Class-I government employees that includes politicians, bureaucrats and anyone being paid salaries of over a lakh from public money,” the organizations said.

(Edited by Christopher Gatphoh)

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