COVID lockdown: Right time to save migrant workers from a quagmire
Even as states across India saw a sea of migrants leaving their host states with disappointment and desperation – some walking back home more than a thousand kilometre away – the silver lining in the gloomy picture is that there is now room to fix the problem to ensure it doesn’t happen again, experts opine.
Uttar Pradesh government recently launched a skill mapping exercise for the labourers who returned from across the country during the lockdown imposed to contain COVID-19.
The exercise has been undertaken to ensure that they get employment in the home state and has successfully mapped over 16 lakh labourers among the 18 lakh who returned home in the last month.
The labourers predominantly hailed from the construction industry, while the rest included technicians, security guards and drivers, as per media reports.
While this was a major source state, mapping skills of the people it sends out in lakhs across the country, a destination state like Karnataka, a few days ago came up with a portal for migrant labourers to register so that they can find a suitable work in any industry.
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The mapping and registration have opened vistas of hope, according to experts, who believe that these initiatives can bring about transparency and accountability for hordes of migrant labourers who are often left at the mercy of the contractors in faraway states.
Registration of all is the way forward
Samirul Islam of West Bengal based NGO, Bangla Sanskriti Mancha, that has been reaching out to the needs of the migrants says that their long-standing demand has been registration of migrant workers from the state.
“We have made this demand for over a decade now. It is important because there are people who work across sites, for example, a construction worker moves after one project finishes. We need to track them to ensure their welfare,” he says.
A source from the Labour Department in Tamil Nadu says that they have taken this time as an opportunity to bring about a foolproof system for tracking migrant labourers entering the state.
“Government is taking a number of measures to ensure that they keep a track of labourers coming into the state from outside. However, in the lockdown we have been able to attend to the needs of over four lakh families with ration as they were contacted through the various associations for construction labourers, plantation workers and catering industry,” he added.
Lack of streamlined system, a loophole
The lack of a streamlined system has been misused by unscrupulous employers.
In May, a brick kiln owner – a repeat offender in Thiruvallur had attacked labourers in his kiln, the Thiruvallur administration ensured that over 6000 workers from other brick kilns around, at least 30 of them, were sent home.
Sensing an opportunity to address the woes of the migrants, the International Justice Mission (IJM), an NGO working towards ending trafficking, also inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Jharkhand government to meet the needs of the stranded migrants.
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The objectives of the MoU were to accelerate relief work through government support, address the needs of the migrants with government sources, look into complaints of non-payment of wages, exploitative work conditions apart from attending to the potential trafficked victims and related distress calls made by Jharkhand workers as forwarded by the Jharkhand Control Room.
The agreement also looked into developing a strategy to address the needs of stranded migrant families in the post-COVID-19 lockdown period in coordination with relevant government officials.
Bring those concerned together
There is also a pattern to the migration, where most brick kiln workers are from Odisha’s Bolangir, Kalahandi and Nuapada districts, while textile and fashion industry in Thiruppur district comprises young women from a tribal belt in Chattisgarh and the manufacturing sector in Sriperambadur employs workers from Bihar and Jharkhand.
A good part of these workers are recruited through their acquaintances.
T.Kuralamuthan, heading government and community relations team, IJM, says that a study by the organisation in 2015, has shown that at least 70 per cent of the labourers in the sample of close to 700 had no idea who their employers were or had no idea about their destination.
“In fact, it was labourers like these who began walking back home during the pandemic, while the ones directly under the care of employers were being taken care of,” he says.
He also points out that the Minimum Wages Act says that they have to be paid their minimum wages during a disaster.
“Violating the pay scale set for their skills indicates that there is an element of exploitation in the process and calls for immediate attention. We have therefore been asking states to adopt technology to understand where the workers in various industries hail from. This can resolve issues like dubious recruitment patterns and intermediaries who are not governed. The intermediaries are gaining profits and are not being policed.”
There are existing legislations that mandate registrations of the labourers by the contractors or employers, says Bernard D.Sami, senior fellow, Loyola Institute of Social Science Training and Research (LISSTAR), Loyola College, adding that they are hardly implemented.
The Inter-State Migrant Workers Act, 1979 (ISMWA) provides for registration of establishments employing inter-state migrant workmen and licensing of contractors.
A working committee report released in 2017 has noted that this Act provides some ‘safeguards’ to the workmen, in the form of obligations placed on the contractor, including non-discrimination in terms of wages vis-à-vis non-migrant workmen, payment of travel and displacement allowance, and ensuring suitable work conditions.
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“There are other legislations like the Building and Other Construction Workers Welfare Cess Act, 1996, which mandates a cess (at 1% of the cost of construction incurred) which is pooled into a fund, managed at the state level by the Construction Worker Welfare Boards, to be used for the provisioning of social security and related services for construction workers. Brick kiln workers are covered under the same act, but not many are aware of it, even as India is the second largest brick producer in the world after China with 250 billion bricks per year.”
In Tamil Nadu, the Welfare Board for construction workers has 28,000 registered under it, a number that is abysmally low, as per social workers.
They also say that this is largely because native labourers are more likely to get registered, while those from other states have not been able to because of lack of information.
Kuralamuthan says, “A little focus on registration of the workers have been facilitated under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojana (DDU-GKY) and in Thiruppur, there is a record of those who are being employed in the industries.”
Firefighting but what about fixing responsibility
Governments across are still in the process of firefighting, which does not have a long-term impact, says S.Irudaya Rajan, professor, Centre for Development Studies.
He adds, “At least 70 per cent of these migrants are still in the states, like in Kerala. The different between a good and a bad employer is evident now, as the ones who didn’t take responsibility for them have to be pulled up. They shouldn’t be given benefits because they caused the crisis across states.”
He also calls for the issuance of migrant smart cards that come with benefits like pension, social security and with details of the employers.
“If there are benefits they will automatically come forward to register and the enumeration can be better. The welfare fund for these migrants will have to be contributed to by Centre, source state, destination state and the employers of the workers. At the moment, the 14 crore of them have to be given two installments of ₹25,000 each to tide over the crisis, and this is 1/6th of the ₹20 lakh crore package offered by the centre,” he says.
