AGARTALA, September 16: Despite of disbursement of huge corpus of fund by the overseas funding agency for the socioeconomic development of the weaker sections of the society, nothing worthwhile is being taken place. Tripura Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) Project, which he aims and objectives of the include restoration of degraded forests and to provide sustainable livelihoods to the forest dependent communities through Joint Forest Management Committees, is funded by Japan.

The contractual workers, working under the said project are not being paid enough to even meet their bread and butter.  A seminar held at Gomati district’s forest conference hall in which issues and prospective plans, for the development of the contractual workers under state forest department, were chalked out. The workers have been associated with the JICA for last seven years. Irrational payment to the workers is leaving them nowhere to be amidst the soaring price of the essential commodities and other exigencies of life.

If the foreign funded project ceases at any point of time in near future, the poorly paid workers face sheer uncertainty in their lives.  Relating to the same, a set of 15 demands were put forward to the Forest department’s Gomati Forest division. Incidentally, no steps yet have been taken by the concerned authority to fix the prolonged problems of the society.