Lax migrant worker registration proving costly for Kochi

Kochi: With the arrest of Jharkhand-based Jitender Oraon with Maoist links on Saturday, experts say registration of migrant laborers would have helped keep a watch on criminals among them and his early arrest.

Only 155 people have labour department license to recruit migrants, and they hired 12,014 workers. But a two-year-old Kerala Labor Movement study found over two lakh migrants working in the district.

“These are people who approached us for the license. We don’t have the exact figures,” district labour officer D. Suresh Kumar said.

The Kollam district panchayat conducted a survey and started registering them to safeguard their health and security, besides identifying criminals among them.

Its president S. Jayamohan said 70 percent of some 50,000 migrants had registered so far. However, a city like Kochi is turning a blind.

Deputy commissioner of police Muhammed Rafeeque V. M. said there was an increase in crimes and registering all the migrant laborers was the best thing to do.

“It will help monitor people having criminal tendencies,” he told DC. “Making identity cards compulsory for all of them to work here is not possible as they are also Indian citizens, and the Constitution provides them with the freedom to work and travel anywhere.”

Perumbavoor and Angamaly have the highest number of migrant labourers in the district.

Inter-State Migrant Workmen (Regulation of Employment) and Conditions of Service Act, 1979, allows monitoring migrant labourers.

It makes it mandatory to get a license from the labor department for recruiters, and it is their sole responsibility to provide them with facilities such as canteen, crèche, drinking water and toilets.

Moreover, the recruiter has to get them identity cards that contain all details.

“The labour department is supposed to issue ID cards,” district panchayat president Eldose Kunnappilly told DC.