• Laborers, auto rickshaw, vegetable sellers milking public dry
• Dimapur municipal told to publish labor fees
• No service, no tax – Naga businesses demand commercial levy out
• Businesses compare Power department’s work to extortion
EMN
Dimapur, May 27
Wild Wild Dimapur, a modern city where product marketing is based on how much the seller can milk the overtaxed citizen for services, continues to sink merrily. For instance, even as Dimapur’s infamous auto rickshaw drivers and vegetable sellers have begun to slowly return to the center of the public’s attention and its growing anger, it is now laborers. Just like most unorganized service sector workers, laborers in Dimapur are not known for being fair when charging fees from the public after rendering service.
The lack of control mechanism in Dimapur –and elsewhere in lawless Nagaland–to check the wanton unfair activities has only bred more opportunistic businesses and legitimized business criminality.
A local organization has asked the Dimapur Municipal Council on Wednesday to start doing something about the labor wages in the commercial town of Nagaland. The council has been told to publish the labor wages of skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled laborers in the district to maintain a uniform rate throughout the district.
“It is learnt that many laborers are charging rates at their whims and fancies since there is hardly any presence of rate control committee,” local organization Survival Nagaland stated in a note issued to the media on Wednesday.
Survival Nagaland has asked the Chief Executive officer of the municipal council to act on the matter. On the other hand, the organization lauded Kohima Municipal Council for making various service rates public from time to time so that the public are not harassed or inconvenienced.
“Plumbers, painters and electricians charge their own rates causing a lot of inconvenience and hardship to the common public. The masons, carpenters and helpers should be categorised in proper price groupings and their rates fixed according to their grades,” the organization stated.
“Our local Naga youths who are now starting to venture in these avenues after coming to learn the dignity of labour and as government jobs have reached saturation points, they are forced to leave it soon as illegal immigrants mostly the Bangladeshis makes a ploy of charging much lower rates than the local youths and after making them abandon their newly found professions they again starts making their own exorbitant rates which is very discouraging and demoralizing the young Nagas”.
Further, Survival Nagaland stated that the absence of a proper price and uniform rate mechanisms have led to a practice where Dimapur’s thousands of migrant workers are setting their own prices or rates “on their own wishes”.
Stating the issues that need checking, the organization has appealed to the authorities of Dimapur “to look into the matter to save our hardworking youths from abandoning their modest professions and make them earn their bread by their own honest sweat”.
The Business Association of Nagas (BAN) has demanded removal of the commercial levy imposed on businesses considering that there is no proper electricity supply, or important facilities such as mobile connectivity, internet services and connectivity required businesses.
The BAN issued a statement on Wednesday asking the state government to remove the commercial tariff when the services for which the tariff are paid for, are never available for use by the payers.
“BAN demands that the commercial tariff levied on business establishment should be stopped as there is no difference between domestic and commercial supply interims of frequent power cuts, low voltages which is not fit for commercial activity,” the organization stated in a vehement statement on May 27.
The association explained the plight of the business community in Dimapur to the authorities: due to lack of proper electricity supply and mobile and internet connectivity which are basic necessities for smooth operation of any business, the business community is undergoing extreme hardship, forcing a lot of businesses to shut down.
The deterioration is a result of, for instance, erratic power supply and unstable voltage, the business community stated. Not only do the businesses have to rely heavily on generators and invertors to run their business, ‘which is costly just running and maintaining it’, but they also have to deal with constant damages to machineries and goods, making it extremely difficult for any business to flourish.
“The department of Power should come out and answer the business community and the public why the power situation is going from bad to worse instead of improving after the increase of power tariff effective from April 2015, BAN wonders if it is another form of extortion from the department,” the Ban stated.
The BAN reminded the chief minister of Nagaland that the increased revenue collection from the business community and public through introduction of online VAT “which he has pointed out on many public events, should not be one of many taxation but should convert it into development to improve power and roads in which is critical to business and economic growth”.
Further, the association reminded that in this age of information and technology every business rely heavily on mobile connectivity and internet service, from something as simple as making calls to making banking tractions.
"It is unfortunate that when in other places and cities where mobile/internet connectivity are improving by day in Nagaland it is worst by the day. The rise in frequency of dropped calls, multiple attempts to make calls, lack of coverage area, providing 3G internet services that is slower than 2G speed of other places, even BSNL Broadband services had deteriorated miserably costing dearly to the business community,” the association stated.
The business community of Nagas in Dimapur has asked the government of Nagaland and the authorities in concern to “kindly address these issues urgently” and with seriousness.
