By Matters India Reporter
Bhubaneswar, Sept 5, 2020: The death of eight migrant laborers in a road accident in central India on September 5 highlights the plight of the vulnerable group that has suffered the most in the lockdown, says an activist nun.
“I am shocked at the accidental death of these innocent people,” said Sujata Jena, who has helped hundreds of migrants return home since India imposed the lockdown March 24 night to contain the coronavirus pandemic.
“Lockdown has destroyed India’s poor migrants completely. Life has remained normal for everyone else,” the member of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Congregation, told Matters India on September 5.
The laborers were killed when their bus collided with a truck at Raipur, capital of the central Indian Chhattisgarh state. The laborers from Ganjam in Odisha, eastern India, were going to Surat in Gujarat western India, some 1,700 km northwest.
The victims were in the group of 67 returning to work in Gujarat. A Surat-based employer is said to have sent a bus to transport the skilled workers back to his textile units.
The accident took place when the bus was trying to overtake another vehicle. While seven men died on the spot, one died later in hospital. As many as 59 laborers were safe and under care of the Raipur administration.
Road accidents during the lockdown killed 198 migrants as of June 2, according to data compiled by the SaveLIFE Foundation, a road safety NGO.
Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has announced 200,000 rupees each to the kin of laborers killed in the accident. Patnaik has also directed Minister Susanta Singh to go to Raipur to extend necessary assistance.
“The migrants have been constantly risking their lives since lockdown,” Sister Jena said.
The federal and state governments have “turned completely blind to the entire issue of migrants,” Sister Jena alleges.
The “biggest issue in the country during pandemic was migrants. But what has the government done for the migrants?” she asks.
Sister Jena’s beneficiaries were natives of Bihar, Chhattisgarh, northeastern states, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. They worked in southern Indian states such as Kerala and Tamil Nadu.
Sister Jena sees reverse migration as laborers now return to their old work places since they could not find job or livelihood in their villages during the lockdown that lasted nearly six months. “Starvation is forcing the poor to make hard choices between life and death.”
Nearly 60 percent of migrants now live on one meal a day. “Most of them frequently ask us when the lockdown would end?” she said.
“Kerala labor department claims every day they receive 2,000 guest workers from Odisha. Today, I met at the airport a big group of migrant laborers going Surat,” she said.
According to the nun activist, the Odisha government has done little for the migrant returnees.” As a source or beneficiary state it has washed its hand of the migrant issue. It has failed to provide the incentives it had announced for all the returnees after a successful completion of quarantine period.”