By Matters India Reporter
Bhubaneswar: A Catholic nun wants the Church and society to urgently reach out to poor migrant laborers as India is reeling under the second wave of coronavirus.
Migrant laborers “continue to fall on prey to road accident, sickness, starvation and death,” laments Sister Sujata Jena, who since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic has been actively involved in the safe return of the migrants and continues to work for their rights through advocacy and lobbying through networking with government administrations and civil society groups.
The immediate reason for the appeal from the member of the Congregation of the Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary was the April 15 accident involving migrant laborers in Odisha, eastern India.
According to news reports, the bus, carrying migrant workers from Kerala’s Kannur, collided with a truck on National Highway 16 near Tangi Bypass in Odisha’s Khurda district.
The collision pushed the bus 40 feet back over a divider. While the passengers escaped with minor injuries, the driver of the truck died in the accident.
On being informed, Tangi police reached the spot and rescued the passengers. They were then sent home in another bus.
The migrants reportedly belonged to Kendrapada district.
According to her, neither the state nor the federal governments are “interested or prepared to tackle the migrants’ issues. The governments “are too busy pursuing their own agendas,” alleges the human rights activist who also works as a freelance journalist and an advocate for Dalits, tribal women, children and minorities, besides migrants.
Sister Jena, a lawyer, wants the governments to appeal the migrant workers to avoid traveling on their own and provide them free transport. The governments “must pay a compensation to the family members of the dead” and make arrangements for food, transit and shelters of the migrants.
She urges the Church, civil society and concerned citizens to rise to the occasion and do whatever they can to reach out to the migrants as they had done last year.
Sister Jena’s appeal has come as cities in India are once again locking down to fight Covid-19 — and workers are once again pouring out and heading back home to rural areas, which health experts fear could accelerate the spread of the virus and devastate poorly equipped villages, as it did last time.
Thousands are fleeing hot spots in cities as India hits another record, with more than 200,000 daily new infections reported on April 15. Bus stations are packed. Crowds are growing at railway stations.
And in at least some of their destinations, according to local officials and migrants who have already made the journey, they are arriving in places hardly ready to test arrivals and quarantine the sick.
India risks repeating the traumatic mass movement that occurred last year after it enforced one of the world’s toughest national lockdowns, eliminating millions of jobs virtually overnight. That lockdown fueled the most disruptive migration across the Indian subcontinent since it was split in two between India and Pakistan in 1947.
Tens of millions of lowly paid migrant workers and their families fled cities by train, bus, cargo truck, bicycle, even by blistered feet to reach home villages hundreds of miles away, where the cost of living was cheaper and they could help and be helped by loved ones.
Hundreds died on the sweltering highways. Even more died back home. The migration also played a significant role in spreading the virus, as local officials in remote districts reported that they were swamped with the sick.