Tengakhat fire: AASU seeks Rs 5 crore per family as three probes begin

The All Assam Students' Union (AASU) has demanded at least Rs 5 crore in compensation for the family of each of the four workers killed in the November 6 blast and fire at Oil India Limited's (OIL) Intermediate Tank Farm at Tengakhat in Dibrugarh district.

A delegation from AASU's Dibrugarh district committee went to OIL's headquarters at Duliajan on Monday and handed over a memorandum addressed to the company's Chairman and Managing Director, Pratidin Time reported.

What AASU wants

The memorandum asks for:

• a minimum of Rs 5 crore for each bereaved family;
• a job with OIL for one member of each of the four families;
• advanced medical care, and suitable compensation without delay, for the three workers still in hospital with critical injuries.

The union said it would step up its protests if the company did not act on the demands within a reasonable time.

Three separate inquiries

The cause of the explosion is now being examined on three tracks, Northeast Live reported:

• OIL's own internal inquiry committee;
• an independent investigation by the Directorate General of Mines Safety (DGMS), the regulator under the Union Ministry of Labour and Employment;
• a magisterial inquiry ordered by the Dibrugarh district administration.

Investigators are going through CCTV footage from the installation and piecing together the sequence of events that led to the blast, officials told the channel.

According to OIL, the fire started at around 9 am on Friday at an indirect bath heater inside the tank farm while maintenance work was going on. The company has said the heater area had been isolated since November 4 ahead of the scheduled work.

Compensation so far

OIL has announced ex gratia of Rs 10 lakh for the family of each person who died and Rs 5 lakh for each injured worker. The private contractor Spectron Engineers Private Limited has separately announced Rs 10 lakh for each bereaved family and Rs 5 lakh for each injured person, and has promised a job to one member of every family that lost someone. That announcement followed a meeting between Spectron and senior OIL officials at Duliajan on Sunday.

AASU's Rs 5 crore figure is far higher than the combined Rs 20 lakh per family announced so far.

Background

The death toll rose to four on Sunday. OIL suspended three officers and one employee on Saturday for alleged dereliction of duty, without naming them or detailing the lapses. Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma and Dibrugarh MP and Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal are monitoring the situation; Sonowal has called for a high-level inquiry into the cause of the explosion.

NEInsider will update this story when the inquiry findings or OIL's response to the AASU demands are made public.