No end to woes of guest workers in Chennai even after 100 days

Despite over 100 days since the town first went into lockdown on March 25, the plight of hundreds of guest workers, who still find no way to return to their home state, remains unchanged.  Forced to stay in dilapidated buildings in various parts of the town, the workers are still waiting for news of a Shramik train to reach their home.

Mainly from Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam, the workers, arrived here to find jobs, especially in the construction sector, have already run out of their resources.

Thanks to the lifting of restrictions, the real estate sector started functioning partially with SOP that made few of them work and earn some income.  But the majority remains jobless as the employers cut the labour demand massively due to the town continuing to grapple with spread of virus.

These workers push their life with the daily meals available with Amma canteens.
Abhimanyu, a worker from Odisha, staying at Narasingapuram near Guindy said that he wanted to go back home. But there was no cash in his hand to bear the travel expense.   Many of the workers came from Odisha and are still living in many places including Thiru-Vi-Ka- Nagar and Guindy. Many of our colleagues at Thiruvika Nagar have shifted one government shelter to another, making life more miserable. So I decided to remain here instead of choosing government shelters’, he said.

He also added he was part of a 1500-member group and the rest of them trapped in the same way in various parts of Tamil Nadu.

Muhammad Ali, a worker from Murshidabad district of West Bengal who is a construction worker at Lekshmi Nagar near Alandur , wants to go home at earliest but he has no clue about when the next train starts from Chennai Central.  

“We are trying to know from our friends about trains so that we could leave. But nobody knows about it. We had also tried to shift to government shelter since we are unable to pay landlords now. But all the government-run shelters have overcrowded now’, he laments.    

P. Vijayakumar, a trade union leader in the city, said that many of these workers had started doing small jobs in a quest to steady their collapsed life. Many of them continue to stay back here as they know it would not be possible to find a job in native place.  Taking this as an advantage, the local employers have started exploiting their helplessness by cutting short or delaying their wages’, he adds.  

It may be recalled the  Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) in March had issued an order under section 10(2)(1) of the Disaster Management Act , asking State  governments and Union Territory authorities to ensure adequate arrangements of temporary shelters and provision of food  for poor and migrant labourers stranded due to lockdown measures in their respective areas.

Following this, the State Government in May had launched a dedicated portal (tnepass.tnega.org) for migrant workers to enroll their name in going back home. Meanwhile, the Chennai Corporation official said that they had operated at least 100 trains from Chennai taking 1.35 lakh workers home so far.