Covid-19 pandemic: Tales of migrant workers betray a year of woes

Their lives thrown into disarray, they struggle with lack of aid, jobs and vaccine

When the Centre enforced a nationwide lockdown as Covid-19 hit India last year, the most visible plight was that of migrant workers making a punishing journey from cities to villages on foot. A year later, they continue to suffer with inadequate aid, unemployment and lack of vaccination preventing them from getting their lives back on track.

The Stranded Workers Act­i­on Network (SWAN), a civil so­ciety group that has been helping migrant workers and do­c­u­menting their lives since the start of the 2020 lockdown, has brought out their ongoing crisis in survey reports over the past one year. As a bunch of SWAN fellows and other workers shared their stories at a virt­ual conference on Monday, they shed more light on the gr­o­wing grievances and unfulf­illed wishes of the community.

Sima Kumari, 27, a SWAN fellow from Simdega district in Jharkhand, was working with a home care service provider in Goa. When the lockdown was announced, she along with 20-25 other women lost their jobs. She now runs a small eatery, and is a strong defender of wor­kers’ rights. “In my experience, there is a world of difference in the lives of workers and those of the owners. Workers are den­ied equality and safety.”

Last month, the Supreme Court asked the Centre to crea­te a portal for registration of un­organised labourers and mig­rant workers. It had earlier asked the central and a few sta­te governments to provide dry ra­tion and open commun­ity ki­tchens. But these have not been implemented, Kumari said.

Md Muslim, a native of Mu­zaffarpur, Bihar, found employment at an auto repair shop in Balasore, Odisha, after working in cities like New Delhi and Kolkata earlier. He recently joi­ned a migrant workers’ group in his hometown to fight for the­ir rights. He also has a SWAN fellowship and hopes to empower workers.

Mohammad Gulzar, 25, took a packed train to his home in Godda, Jharkhand, from Goa where he used to work with event management companies. “I had to search for work in the market daily. But the police stopped us more than a week before the lockdown was announced,” he said.

Back home, he got work for a mere two weeks under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. “But this year, there has been no work so far. I visited the block office with other villagers, but to no avail.”

Covid-19 vaccine supply, too, is scarce. “In our village, out of 400 houses hardly any have got va­c­cines,” Gulzar said.

Tahir Hussain Talukder, 24, a SWAN fellow from Silchar in Assam, pointed out that companies in cities ask for vaccine proof if they are app­roached for work. Taluk­der used to work with a cinema in Bengaluru. His search for both a job and a vaccine is on. 
 

“The vaccine centres are far away and there are long que­ues,” he said, alleging that there were cases of doctors handing out fake vaccine certificates if they were bribed with Rs 1,000.

Among the returnees who could go back to cities and re­join work, the workers said that while companies arranged bus transport, they had to pay for the journeys and their new accommodation while settling for lower wages.

Bhivishon Kumar Singh, a graduate from Bihar who was enrolled in a postgraduate course in New Delhi, had to leave studies as his family couldn’t support him anymore. Now a labour manager at a manufacturing plant in Mum­bai, he wishes for exemption of room rent. “Only those who are from Mum­bai get ration support here. If I go to the ration shop, they ask for my Aad­haar card and deny me seeing my Bihar address,” he said.

Workers, he add­ed, are scared of a third wave of Covid-19 and are making departure plans al­ready. “They repeatedly ask labour ma­na­g­e­rs to alert them of a lockdown in advance.”

A fervent wish is job opportunities at their home states. Besides, they seek access to welfare from Centre and states, no matter where they work, and educational support for their children who have been left behind in the digital learning divide amid the pandemic.

A SWAN report last month observed that women and children bore the brunt of the second wave of Covid-19 this year. More than men, women suffer mentally, said Kumari. “There should be job opportunities at home. We hear of beti bachao, beti padhao but we don’t see that happening in our villages.”